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

their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of

owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of

years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

 

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their

possession.

 

I wonder where they get those tokens,

Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

 

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,

Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,

Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,

Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,

Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

 

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,

Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,

Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

 

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,

His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

 

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,

Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?

Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

 

33

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at,

What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass,

What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,

And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

 

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,

I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,

I am afoot with my vision.

 

By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumber-men,

Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,

Weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips,

crossing savannas, trailing in forests,

Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,

Scorch’d ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the

shallow river,

Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the

buck turns furiously at the hunter,

Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the

otter is feeding on fish,

Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the

beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;

Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower’d cotton plant, over

the rice in its low moist field,

Over the sharp-peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and

slender shoots from the gutters,

Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav’d corn, over the

delicate blue-flower flax,

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with

the rest,

Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;

Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low

scragged limbs,

Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,

Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,

Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great

goldbug drops through the dark,

Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to

the meadow,

Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous

shuddering of their hides,

Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle

the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;

Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,

Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,

Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it

myself and looking composedly down,)

Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat

hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,

Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,

Where the steamship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,

Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,

Where the half-burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents,

Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below;

Where the dense-starr’d flag is borne at the head of the regiments,

Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,

Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,

Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,

Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of

base-ball,

At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,

bull-dances, drinking, laughter,

At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the

juice through a straw,

At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,

At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;

Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,

screams, weeps,

Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, where the dry-stalks are

scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,

Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to

the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,

Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,

Where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,

Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles

far and near,

Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived

swan is curving and winding,

Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her

near-human laugh,

Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the

high weeds,

Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with

their heads out,

Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery,

Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,

Where the yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at

night and feeds upon small crabs,

Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,

Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over

the well,

Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,

Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,

Through the gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through the

office or public hall;

Pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d with

the new and old,

Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome,

Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,

Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church,

Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher,

impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting;

Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon,

flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,

Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds,

or down a lane or along the beach,

My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;

Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy, (behind me

he rides at the drape of the day,)

Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the

moccasin print,

By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,

Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;

Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,

Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,

Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,

Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,

Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side,

Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,

Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the

diameter of eighty thousand miles,

Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,

Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,

Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,

Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,

I tread day and night such roads.

 

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,

And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green.

 

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,

My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

 

I help myself to material and immaterial,

No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.

 

I anchor my ship for a little while only,

My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.

 

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a

pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

 

I ascend to the foretruck,

I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest,

We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,

Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,

The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is

plain in all directions,

The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my

fancies toward them,

We are approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to

be engaged,

We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still

feet and caution,

Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city,

The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities

of the globe.

 

I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,

I turn the bridgroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,

I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

 

My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,

They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.

 

I understand the large hearts of heroes,

The courage of present times and all times,

How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the

steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of

days and faithful of nights,

And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will

not desert you;

How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and

would not give it up,

How he saved the drifting company at last,

How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the

side of their prepared graves,

How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the

sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;

All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

 

The disdain and calmness of martyrs,

The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her

children gazing on,

The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,

blowing, cover’d with sweat,

The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous

buckshot and the bullets,

All these I feel or am.

 

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,

Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,

I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the

ooze of my skin,

I fall on the weeds and stones,

The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.

 

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the

wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

 

I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

Heat and smoke I