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

>All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,

All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name,

date, location,

All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,

All suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of his

mouth, or the shaping of his great hands,

All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe,

or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix’d stars,

by those there as we are here,

All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are,

or by any one,

These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which

they sprang, or shall spring.

 

Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?

The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,

No consummation exists without being from some long previous

consummation, and that from some other,

Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the

beginning than any.

 

Whatever satisfies souls is true;

Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,

Itself only finally satisfies the soul,

The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson

but its own.

 

Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time,

space, reality,

That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.

 

What is prudence is indivisible,

Declines to separate one part of life from every part,

Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead,

Matches every thought or act by its correlative,

Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,

Knows that the young man who composedly peril’d his life and lost it

has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,

That he who never peril’d his life, but retains it to old age in

riches and ease, has probably achiev’d nothing for himself worth

mentioning,

Knows that only that person has really learn’d who has learn’d to

prefer results,

Who favors body and soul the same,

Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,

Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor

avoids death.

 

} The Singer in the Prison

 

O sight of pity, shame and dole!

O fearful thought—a convict soul.

 

1

Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,

Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,

Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the

like whereof was never heard,

Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas’d their pacing,

Making the hearer’s pulses stop for ecstasy and awe.

 

2

The sun was low in the west one winter day,

When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,

(There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters,

Gather’d to Sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round,

Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)

Calmly a lady walk’d holding a little innocent child by either hand,

Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform,

She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude,

In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.

 

A soul confined by bars and bands,

Cries, help! O help! and wrings her hands,

Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast,

Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.

 

Ceaseless she paces to and fro,

O heart-sick days! O nights of woe!

Nor hand of friend, nor loving face,

Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.

 

It was not I that sinn’d the sin,

The ruthless body dragg’d me in;

Though long I strove courageously,

The body was too much for me.

 

Dear prison’d soul bear up a space,

For soon or late the certain grace;

To set thee free and bear thee home,

The heavenly pardoner death shall come.

 

Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole!

Depart—a God-enfranchis’d soul!

 

3

The singer ceas’d,

One glance swept from her clear calm eyes o’er all those upturn’d faces,

Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal,

seam’d and beauteous faces,

Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,

While her gown touch’d them rustling in the silence,

She vanish’d with her children in the dusk.

 

While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr’d,

(Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)

A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute,

With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow’d and moved to weeping,

And youth’s convulsive breathings, memories of home,

The mother’s voice in lullaby, the sister’s care, the happy childhood,

The long-pent spirit rous’d to reminiscence;

A wondrous minute then—but after in the solitary night, to many,

many there,

Years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune,

the voice, the words,

Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle,

The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings,

 

O sight of pity, shame and dole!

O fearful thought—a convict soul.

 

} Warble for Lilac-Time

 

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)

Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature’s sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,

Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)

Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,

Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,

Bluebird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his

golden wings,

The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,

Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,

All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,

The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,

The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,

With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,

Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest

of his mate,

The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,

For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it

and from it?

Thou, soul, unloosen’d—the restlessness after I know not what;

Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!

O if one could but fly like a bird!

O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!

To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters;

Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the

morning drops of dew,

The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,

Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,

Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,

To grace the bush I love—to sing with the birds,

A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

 

} Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]

 

1

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?

What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?

The life thou lived’st we know not,

But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ‘mid the haunts of

brokers,

Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

 

2

Silent, my soul,

With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d,

Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.

 

While through the interior vistas,

Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)

Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes,

Spiritual projections.

 

In one, among the city streets a laborer’s home appear’d,

After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,

The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove.

 

In one, the sacred parturition scene,

A happy painless mother birth’d a perfect child.

 

In one, at a bounteous morning meal,

Sat peaceful parents with contented sons.

 

In one, by twos and threes, young people,

Hundreds concentring, walk’d the paths and streets and roads,

Toward a tall-domed school.

 

In one a trio beautiful,

Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter’s daughter, sat,

Chatting and sewing.

 

In one, along a suite of noble rooms,

‘Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,

Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old,

Reading, conversing.

 

All, all the shows of laboring life,

City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s,

Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy,

Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room,

Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college,

The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught,

The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father’d and mother’d,

The hungry fed, the houseless housed;

(The intentions perfect and divine,

The workings, details, haply human.)

 

3

O thou within this tomb,

From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,

Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,

Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.

 

Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,

By you, your banks Connecticut,

By you and all your teeming life old Thames,

By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco,

You Hudson, you endless Mississippi—nor you alone,

But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.

 

} Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]

 

1

Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,

These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,

This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for

you, in each for each,

(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—0 heaven!

The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)

This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,

This film of Satan’s seething pit,

This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this

soundless sea;

Out from the convolutions of this globe,

This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,

This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,

Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)

These burin’d eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,

To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate,

To you whoe’er you are—a look.

 

2

A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,

Of youth long sped and middle age declining,

(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,

Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)

Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,

As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open’d window,

Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,

To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,

Then travel travel on.

 

} Vocalism

 

1

Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine

power to speak words;

Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous

practice? from physique?

Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?

Come duly to the divine power to speak words?

For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,

procreation, prudence, and nakedness,

After treading ground and breasting river and lake,

After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,

after knowledge, freedom, crimes,

After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing

obstructions,

After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,

woman, the divine power to speak words;

Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all—none

refuse, all attend,

Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities,

hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in

close ranks,

They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the

mouth of that man or that woman.

 

2

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?

Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,

As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere

around the globe.

 

All waits for the right voices;

Where is the practis’d and