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

>For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to

unsettle them,

I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have

been had all accepted me,

I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,

majorities, nor ridicule,

And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,

And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;

Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still

urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,

Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

 

} Delicate Cluster

 

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!

Covering all my lands—all my seashores lining!

Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing!

How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)

Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!

Ah my silvery beauty—ah my woolly white and crimson!

Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!

My sacred one, my mother.

 

} To a Certain Civilian

 

Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?

Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?

Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?

Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand—nor

am I now;

(I have been born of the same as the war was born,

The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the

martial dirge,

With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s funeral;)

What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,

And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,

For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.

 

} Lo, Victress on the Peaks

 

Lo, Victress on the peaks,

Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,

(The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)

Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all,

Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,

Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom—lo, in

these hours supreme,

No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous verse,

But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping wounds,

And psalms of the dead.

 

} Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]

 

Spirit whose work is done—spirit of dreadful hours!

Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;

Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering

pressing,)

Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene—electric spirit,

That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a

tireless phantom flitted,

Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum,

Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,

reverberates round me,

As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,

As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,

As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,

As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the

distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,

Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left,

Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;

Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day,

Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,

Leave me your pulses of rage—bequeath them to me—fill me with

currents convulsive,

Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,

Let them identify you to the future in these songs.

 

} Adieu to a Soldier

 

Adieu O soldier,

You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)

The rapid march, the life of the camp,

The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,

Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game,

Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you

and like of you all fill’d,

With war and war’s expression.

 

Adieu dear comrade,

Your mission is fulfill’d—but I, more warlike,

Myself and this contentious soul of mine,

Still on our own campaigning bound,

Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,

Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,

Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here,

To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

 

} Turn O Libertad

 

Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,

From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute,

sweeping the world,

Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,

From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,

From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste,

Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up that

backward world,

Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,

But what remains remains for singers for you—wars to come are for you,

(Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars

of the present also inure;)

Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad—turn your undying face,

To where the future, greater than all the past,

Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

 

} To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod

 

To the leaven’d soil they trod calling I sing for the last,

(Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,)

In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits

and vistas again to peace restored,

To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the

South and the North,

To the leaven’d soil of the general Western world to attest my songs,

To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,

To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,

To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide,

To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air;

And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)

The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely,

The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son,

The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end,

But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.

 

[BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN]

 

} When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

 

1

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

 

2

O powerful western fallen star!

O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!

O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!

O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

 

3

In the dooryard fronting an old farmhouse near the whitewash’d palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.

 

4

In the swamp in secluded recesses,

A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

 

Solitary the thrush,

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,

Sings by himself a song.

 

Song of the bleeding throat,

Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,

If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldist surely die.)

 

5

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,

Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d

from the ground, spotting the gray debris,

Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the

endless grass,

Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the

dark-brown fields uprisen,

Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,

Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,

Night and day journeys a coffin.

 

6

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,

With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,

With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,

With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the

unbared heads,

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,

With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong

and solemn,

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these

you journey,

With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,

Here, coffin that slowly passes,

I give you my sprig of lilac.

 

7

(Nor for you, for one alone,

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,

For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane

and sacred death.

 

All over bouquets of roses,

O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,

But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,

Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,

With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,

For you and the coffins all of you O death.)

 

8

O western orb sailing the heaven,

Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,

As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,

As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,

As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the

other stars all look’d on,)

As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not

what kept me from sleep,)

As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you

were of woe,

As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,

As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black

of the night,

As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,

Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.

 

9

Sing on there in the swamp,

O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,

I hear, I come presently, I understand you,

But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,

The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.

 

10

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?

And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?

And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?

 

Sea-winds blown from east and west,

Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till

there on the prairies meeting,

These and with these and the breath of my chant,

I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.

 

11

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?

And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,

To adorn the burial-house of him I love?

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,

With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,

With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking

sun, burning, expanding the air,

With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green