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

and has for years—

Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

 

} The Unexpress’d

 

How dare one say it?

After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,

Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s—Homer, Shakspere—the long, long times’

thick dotted roads, areas,

The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars—Nature’s pulses reap’d,

All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,

All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,

All human lives, throats, wishes, brains—all experiences’ utterance;

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,

Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print—something lacking,

(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

 

} Grand Is the Seen

 

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—grand are the sky and stars,

Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,

And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,

Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing

the sea,

(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what

amount without thee?)

More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!

More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.

 

} Unseen Buds

 

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,

Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,

Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,

Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;

Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,

(On earth and in the sea—the universe—the stars there in the

heavens,)

Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,

And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

 

} Good-Bye My Fancy!

 

Good-bye my Fancy!

Farewell dear mate, dear love!

I’m going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,

So Good-bye my Fancy.

 

Now for my last—let me look back a moment;

The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,

Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

 

Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;

Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.

 

Yet let me not be too hasty,

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended

into one;

Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)

If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,

May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who

knows?)

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,

Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.

 

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman