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

the law of

us changed,

I have dream’d that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present

and past law,

And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and

past law,

For I have dream’d that the law they are under now is enough.

 

And I have dream’d that the purpose and essence of the known life,

the transient,

Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent.

 

If all came but to ashes of dung,

If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d,

Then indeed suspicion of death.

 

Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

 

Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,

Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,

The whole universe indicates that it is good,

The past and the present indicate that it is good.

 

How beautiful and perfect are the animals!

How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!

What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,

The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable

fluids perfect;

Slowly and surely they have pass’d on to this, and slowly and surely

they yet pass on.

 

9

I swear I think now that every thing without exception has an eternal soul!

The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the

animals!

 

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!

That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for

it, and the cohering is for it!

And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—and life and

materials are altogether for it!

 

[BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH]

 

} Darest Thou Now O Soul

 

Darest thou now O soul,

Walk out with me toward the unknown region,

Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

 

No map there, nor guide,

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,

Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

 

I know it not O soul,

Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,

All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.

 

Till when the ties loosen,

All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,

Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

 

Then we burst forth, we float,

In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,

Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

 

} Whispers of Heavenly Death

 

Whispers of heavenly death murmur’d I hear,

Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,

Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,

Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,

(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

 

I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,

Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,

With at times a half-dimm’d sadden’d far-off star,

Appearing and disappearing.

 

(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;

On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,

Some soul is passing over.)

 

} Chanting the Square Deific

 

1

Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides,

Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,

Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah am I,

Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;

Not Time affects me—I am Time, old, modern as any,

Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments,

As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,

Aged beyond computation, yet never new, ever with those mighty laws rolling,

Relentless I forgive no man—whoever sins dies—I will have that man’s life;

Therefore let none expect mercy—have the seasons, gravitation, the

appointed days, mercy? no more have I,

But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days

that forgive not,

I dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least remorse.

 

2

Consolator most mild, the promis’d one advancing,

With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,

Foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and poems,

From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes—lo! Hermes I—lo! mine is

Hercules’ face,

All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,

Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and

crucified, and many times shall be again,

All the world have I given up for my dear brothers’ and sisters’

sake, for the soul’s sake,

Wanding my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss

of affection,

For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and

all-enclosing charity,

With indulgent words as to children, with fresh and sane words, mine only,

Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin’d myself to an

early death;

But my charity has no death—my wisdom dies not, neither early nor late,

And my sweet love bequeath’d here and elsewhere never dies.

 

3

Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,

Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,

Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,

With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart,

proud as any,

Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me,

Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles,

(Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel’d, and my wiles

done, but that will never be,)

Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly

appearing, (and old ones also,)

Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any,

Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.

 

4

Santa Spirita, breather, life,

Beyond the light, lighter than light,

Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,

Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,

Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including

Saviour and Satan,

Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were God?)

Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,

(namely the unseen,)

Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, the

general soul,

Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,

Breathe my breath also through these songs.

 

} Of Him I Love Day and Night

 

Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was dead,

And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he was

not in that place,

And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find him,

And I found that every place was a burial-place;

The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)

The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,

Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as

of the living,

And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;

And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,

And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d,

And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,

And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,

even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,

And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly

render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied,

Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.

 

} Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours

 

Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,

Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,

Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o’erweening, mocking

voice,

Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward.

 

Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,

The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain,

The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,

Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.

 

I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,

I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,

your mute inquiry,

Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,—

Old age, alarm’d, uncertain—a young woman’s voice, appealing to

me for comfort;

A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?

 

} As If a Phantom Caress’d Me

 

As if a phantom caress’d me,

I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;

But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the

one I loved that caress’d me,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has

utterly disappear’d.

And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.

 

} Assurances

 

I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul;

I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and

face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant

of, calm and actual faces,

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in

any iota of the world,

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,

in vain I try to think how limitless,

I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their

swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day

be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have

their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and

the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are

provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the

deaths of little children are provided for,

(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport

of all Life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of

them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has

gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any

time, is provided for in the inherences of things,

I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I

believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

 

} Quicksand Years

 

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,

Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not,

One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that

out of all is sure,

Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

 

} That Music Always Round Me

 

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long

untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of

daybreak I hear,

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and

violins, all these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite

meanings,

I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,

contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;