 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading is by Gordon Mackenzie. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Book III Song of Myself XIV The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night. Yahonk, he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation. The perk may suppose it meaningless, but I, listening close, find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky. The sharp hoofed moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie dog, the litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, the brood of the turkey hen, and she with her half-spread wings, I see in them and myself the same old law. The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections. They scorn the best I can do to relate them. I am enamored of growing outdoors, of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods, of the builders and stirrers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses. I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me. Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, not asking the sky to come down to my good will, scattering it freely for ever. 15. The pure Contralto sings in the organ loft. The carpenter dresses his plank. The tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp. The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner. The pilot seizes the kingpin. He heaves down with a strong arm. The mate stands braced in the whale-boat. Lance and harpoon are ready. The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches. The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar. The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel. The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a first-day loaf and looks at the oats and rye. The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case. He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom. The jour-printer with grey head and gaunt-jaws works at his case. He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blur with the manuscript. The malformed limbs are tied to the surgeon's table. What is removed drops horribly in a pail. The quadruined girl is sold at the auction stand. The drunkard nods by the bar-room stove. The machinist rolls up his sleeves. The policeman travels his beat. The gatekeeper marks who pass. The young fellow drives the express-wagon. I love him, though I do not know him. The half-breed straps on his light-boots to compete in the race. The western turkey-shooting draws old and young. Some lean on their rifles. Some sit on logs. Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his peace. The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee. As the woolly pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle. The bugle calls in the ball-room. The gentlemen run for their partners. The dancers bow to each other. The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain. The wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the huron. The squaw wrapped in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale. The connoisseur peers along the exhibition gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways. As the deck-hands make fast at the steam-boat, the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers. The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball and stops now and then for the knots. The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a week ago born her first child. The clean-haired Yankee girl works with her sewing machine or in the factory or mill. The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer. The reporter's lead flies swiftly over the notebook. The sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold. The canal-boy trots on the tow-path. The book-keeper counts at his desk. The shoemaker waxes his thread. The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him. The child is baptized. The convert is making his first professions. The regatta is spread on the bay. The race has begun. How the white sails sparkle! The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that would stray. The peddler sweats with his pack on his back. The purchaser higgling about the odd scent. The bride unrumples her white dress. The minute hand of the clock moves slowly. The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips. The prostitute dragles her shawl. Her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck. The crowd laugh at her black-art oaths. The men jeer and wink to each other. Miserable. I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you. The president, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the great secretaries. On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms. The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold. The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle. As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives notice by the jingling of loose change. The floor-men are laying the floor. The tinners are tinning the roof. The masons are calling for mortar. In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers. Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd is gathered. It is the fourth of seventh month. What salutes of cannon and small arms? Seasons pursuing each other, the plower plows, the mower mows, and the winter grain falls in the ground. Off on the lakes, the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface. The stumps stand thick round the clearing. The squatter strikes deep with his axe. Flat boatmen make fast towards dusk near the cottonwood or pecan trees. Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red River or through those drained by the Tennessee or through those of the Arkansas. Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooch or Alta-Maha. Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them. In walls of Adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport. The city sleeps and the country sleeps. The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time. The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife. And these tend inward to me and I tend outward to them. And such as it is to be of these more or less I am and of these one and all I weave the song of myself. Sixteen. I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, regardless of others, ever regardful of others, maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, stuffed with the stuff that is coarse and stuffed with the stuff that is fine. One of the nation of many nations, the smallest, the same, and the largest, the same. A southerner, soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Okenee I live, a Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limbrest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, a Kentuckian walking the veil of the elk horn in my deerskin leggings, a Louisianaan or Georgian, a boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye, at home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush or with fishermen off Newfoundland, at home in the fleet of ice-boats sailing with the rest and tracking, at home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texan Ranch, comrade of Californians, comrade of free north-westerners loving their big proportions, comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meet, a learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest, a novice beginning, yet experienced of myriads of seasons, of every hue and cased MI, of every rank and religion, a farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, prisoner, fancy man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. I resist anything better than my own diversity. Breathe the air, but leave plenty after me, and I'm not stuck up and I'm in my place. The moth and the fish eggs are in their place. The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place. The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place. Seventeen. These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands. They are not original with me. If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing. If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing. If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is. This is the common air that bathes the globe. Eighteen. With music strong I come. With my cornets and my drums. I play not marches for accepted victors only. I play marches for conquered and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall. Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead. I blow through my embouchures, my loudest and gayest for them. Vivas to those who have failed. And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea. And to those themselves who sank in the sea. And to all generals that lost engagements and all overcome heroes. And the numberless, unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known. Nineteen. This is the meal equally set. This the meat for natural hunger. It is for the wicked just same as the righteous. I make appointments with all. I will not have a single person slighted or left away. The kept woman, sponger, thief are hereby invited. The heavy-lipped slave is invited. The venerially is invited. There shall be no difference between them and the rest. This is the press of a bashful hand. This the float and odor of hair. This the touch of my lips to yours. This the murmur of yearning. This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face. This the thoughtful merge of myself and the outlet again. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have. For the fourth month showers have. And the mica on the side of a rock has. Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Does the early red start twittering through the woods? Do I astonish more than they? This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody. But I will tell you. Twenty. Who goes there? Scattering, gross, mystical nude. How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own. Else it were time lost listening to me. I do not snivel that snivel the world over, that months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and filth, whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids. Conformity goes to the fourth removed. I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious? Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counseled with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself. None more and not one a barley-corn less. And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. I know I am solid and sound. To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow. All are written to me. And I must get what the writing means. I know I am deathless. I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass. I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am August. I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood. I see that the elementary laws never apologize. I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all. I exist as I am. That is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content. And if each and all be aware, I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me. And that is myself. And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. My foothold is tenoned and mortist in granite. I laugh at what you call dissolution. And I know the amplitude of time. Twenty-one, I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me. The first I graft and increase upon myself. The latter I translate into new tongue. I am the poet of the woman, the same as the man. And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man. And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride. We have had ducking and deprecating about enough. I show that size is only development. Have you outstripped the rest? Are you the president? It is a trifle. They will more than arrive there every one and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night. I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night. Press close, bare-bosomed night. Press close, magnetic, nourishing night. Night of south winds. Night of the large few stars. Still-nodding night. Mad-naked summer night. Smile, o voluptuous, cool-breathed earth. Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees. Earth of the departed sunset. Earth of the mountains misty-topped. Earth of the vitrious pore of the full moon just tinged with blue. Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river. Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake. Far-swooping elbowed earth. Rich, apple-blossomed earth. Smile for your lover comes. Prodigal, you have given me love. Therefore I to you give love. Oh, unspeakable, passionate love. You see, I resign myself to you also. I guess what you mean. I behold from the beach your crooked fingers. I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me. We must have a turn together. I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land. Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drows. Dash me with amorous wet. I can repay you. Sea of stretched groundswells. Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths. Sea of the brine of life and of unshoveled yet always ready graves. Howler and scooper of storms. Capricious and dainty sea. I am integral with you. I too am of one phase and of all phases. Partaker of influx and efflux I. Extoler of hate and conciliation. Extoler of amese and those that sleep in each other's arms. I am he a testing sympathy. Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them? I am not the poet of goodness only. I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me. I stand indifferent. My gate is no fault finders or rejectors gate. I moisten the roots of all that has grown. Did you fear some scruffula out of the unflagging pregnancy? Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over? And rectified? I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance. Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine. Thoughts and deeds of the present are rouse and early start. This minute that comes to me over the past decillions. There is no better than it and now. What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such wonder. The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel. 23. Endless unfolding of words of ages. And mine a word of the modern. The word en masse. A word of the faith that never balks. Here or henceforward it is all the same to me. I accept time absolutely. It alone is without flaw. It alone rounds and completes all. That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. I accept reality and dare not question it. Materialism first and last imbuing. Hurrah for positive science. Long live exact demonstration. Fetch stone crop mixed with cedar and branches of lilac. This is the lexicographer. This is the chemist. This made a grammar of the old cartouches. These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist. This works with the scalper. And this is a mathematician. Gentlemen, to you the first honours always. Your facts are useful. And yet they are not my dwelling. I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. Less the reminders of properties told my words. And more the reminders they of life untold. And of freedom and extrication. And make short account of neuters and geldings. And favour men and women fully equipped. And beat the gong of revolt. And stop with fugitives. And them that plot and conspire. 24. Walt Whitman. A cosmos of Manhattan the sun. Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding. No sentimentalist. No standard above men and women more apart from them. No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors. Unscrews the doors themselves from their jams. Whoever degrades another degrades me. And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the aphelitus surging and surging. Through me the current and index. I speak the password primeval. I give the sign of democracy. By God I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me many long dumb voices. Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves. Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves and dwarves. Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion. And of the threads that connect the stars. And of wombs and of the father's stuff. And of the rites of them that others are down upon. Of the deformed, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, fog in the air, beetles, rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices. Voices of sexes and lusts. Voices veiled and I removed the veil. Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured. I do not press my fingers across my mouth. I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart. Copulation is no more ranked to me than death is. I believe in the flesh and the appetites. Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles. And each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I. Inside and out and I make wholly whatever I touch or am touched from. The scent of these armpits. Aroma finer than prayer. This head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds. If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body or any part of it. Translucent mold of me, it shall be you. Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you. Firm masculine colter, it shall be you. Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you. You, my rich blood. Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life. Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you. My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions. Root of washed sweet flag. Timorous pond snipe. Nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you. Mixed, tussled hay of head, beard brawn, it shall be you. Trickling sap of maple. Fiber of manly wheat, it shall be you. Sun so generous, it shall be you. Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you. You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you. Winds whose soft tickling genitals rub against me, it shall be you. Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak. Loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you. Hands I have taken. Face I have kissed. Mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you. I dot on myself. There is that lot of me, and all so luscious. Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy. I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor wence the cause of my faintest wish, nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again, that I walk up my stoop. I pause to consider, if it really be, a morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. To behold the daybreak. The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows. The air tastes good to my palate. Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambles, silently rising, freshly exuding, scooting obliquely, high and low. Something I cannot see puts upward, libidness prongs, seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. The earth by the sky stayed with the daily clothes of their junction. The heaved challenge from the east, that moment over my head, the mocking taunt. See then whether you shall be master. Twenty-five. Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me. If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me, we also ascend. Dazzling and tremendous as the sun. We found our own home, my soul, in the calm and cool of the daybreak. My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach. With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Speech is the twin of my vision. It is unequal to measure itself. It provokes me for ever. It says sarcastically, Walt, you contain enough. Why don't you let it out then? Come now. I will not be tantalized. You conceive too much of articulation. Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded, waiting in gloom, protected by frost, the dirt receding before my prophetical screams? I, underlying, causes to balance them at last. My knowledge, my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things. Happiness. Which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day. My final merit, I refuse you. I refuse putting from me what I really am. Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me. I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me. I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face. With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. Twenty-six. Now I will do nothing. But listen to accrue what I hear into this song to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals. I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds, running together, combined, fused, or following. Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, talkative young ones to those that like them, loud laugh of work people at their meals, the angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, the judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death sentence, the heave-yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, the ring of alarm bells, the cry of fire, the whir of swift streaking engines and hose carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights, the steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, the slow march played at the head of the association marching two and two. They go to guard some corpse. The flag-tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violin cello. Tis the young man's hearts complaint. I hear the keyed cornet. It glides quickly in through my ears. It shakes mad sweet pangs through my belly and breast. I hear the chorus. It is a grand opera. Ah, this indeed is music. This suits me. A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me. The orbic flecks of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the trained soprano. What work with hers is this? The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies. It wrenches such ardors from me. I did not know I possessed them. It sails me. I dab with bare feet. They are licked by the indolent waves. I am cut by bitter and angry hail. I lose my breath, steeped amid honeyed morphine. My windpipe throttled in fakes of death. At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles. And that we call being. End of section twenty-six. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Gordon Mackenzie. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Book Three Song of Myself Twenty-seven To Be in Any Form What is that? Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither. If nothing lay more developed, the Quohog and its callous shell were enough. Mine is no callous shell. I have instant conductors all over me. Whether I pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy. To touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand. Twenty-eight Is this, then, a touch? Quivering me to a new identity? Flames in ether making a rush for my veins. Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them. My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself. On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, straining the udder of my heart with its withheld drip, behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, depriving me of my best as for a purpose, unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields, immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away. They bribed to swap off with touch and go, and graze at the edges of me. No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. The sentries desert every other part of me. They have left me helpless to a red marauder. They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. I am given up by traitors. I talk wildly I have lost my wits. I and nobody else am the greatest traitor. I went myself first to the headland. My own hands carried me there. You villain touch! What are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat. Unclench your floodgates. You are too much for me. 29 Blind, loving, wrestling touch. Sheathed, hooded, sharp-toothed touch. Did it make you ache so, leaving me? Parting tracked by arriving. Perpetual payment of perpetual loan. Rich, showering rain and recompense richer afterward. Sprouts take and accumulate. Stand by the curb prolific and vital. Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. 30 All truths wait in all things. They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it. They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon. The insignificant is as big to me as any. What is less or more than a touch? Logic and sermons never convince. The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so. Only what nobody denies is so. A minute and a drop of me settle my brain. I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps. And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman. And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other. And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific. And until one in all shall delight us. And we them. 31 I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect. And a grain of sand and the egg of the wren. And the tree-toed is a chef-derve for the highest. And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven. And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery. And the cow, crunching with depressed head, surpasses any statue. And a mouse is a miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate niece, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, escalant roots, and am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over, and have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, but call anything back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness. In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach. In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones. In vain objects stand, leagues off, and assume manifold shapes. In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low. In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky. In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs. In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods. In vain the razor-billed awk sails far north to Labrador. I follow quickly. I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. Thirty-two. I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for 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. Space and time. Now I see it is true what I guessed at. What I guessed when I loafed on the grass. What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed. And again as I walked 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 lumbermen along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, weeding my onion patch, we're hosing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests, prospecting gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river, where the panther walks to and throw 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 tail, over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flowered cotton plant, over the rice in its low, moist field, over the sharp-peaked farmhouse, with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters, over the western persimmon, over the long-leaved corn, over the delicate blue flower of flax, over the white and brown of 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 in the wheat-lot, where the bat flies in the seventh-month eve, where the great gold-bug 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 shuttering of their hides, where the cheesecloth hangs in the kitchen, where and-iron straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from their afters, 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 steam-ship 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-burned brig is riding on unknown currents, where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the death are corrupting below, where the dense-starred flag is born 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 doorstep, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside, upon the race-course or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of baseball, at he-festivals with blagger jibes, 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 mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, streams, weeps, where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, where the dry stalks are scattered, 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 hummingbird 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 beehives range on a grey bench in the garden half-hid by the high weeds, where band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, where burial-coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery, where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicle trees, where the yellow-crowned 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 Katie 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 furs, through the gymnasium, through the curtain saloon, through the office or public hall, pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign, pleased with the new and old, pleased with the homely woman, as well as the handsome, pleased with the quakerous, as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, pleased with the tune of the choir of the white-washed church, pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, impressed seriously at the camp meeting, looking in at the shop windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flattening the flesh of my nose on the thick-plate glass, wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds or down a lane or along the beach, my right and left arms on the sides of two friends, and I in the middle, coming home with a silent and dark-cheeked 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 coffined 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 backyard, my thoughts gone from me a long while, walking the old hills of Judea, 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 tailed meteors, throwing fireballs like the rest, carrying the crescent child that carries its own mother in its belly, storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing and filling, peering and disappearing, I tread day and night, such roads. I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product and look at quintillions ripened 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 in the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue. I ascend to the four-truck. 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-topped 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 ruined city, the blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. I am a free companion. I bevwack by invading watch-fires. I turn the bridegroom 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 drowned. 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 as faithful of days and faithful of nights and chalked in large letters on a board. Be of good cheer, we will not desert you. How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up. How he saved the drifting company at last. How the lank, loose-gowned women looked and boated from the side of their prepared graves. How the silent, old-faced infants and the lifted sick and the sharp-lipped, unshaven men. All this I swallow. It tastes good. I like it well. It becomes mine. I am the man. I suffered. I was there, the disdain and calmness of martyrs. The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burnt like dry wood, her children gazing on. The hounded slave that flags in the race leans by the fence blowing covered 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, thinned with the ooze of my skin. I fall on the weeds and stones. The riders spur their unwilling horses. Hall 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. I lean on a cane and observe. I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken. Tumbling walls buried me in their debris. Heat and smoke I inspired. I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades. I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels. They have cleared the beams away. They tenderly lift me forth. I lie in the night air in my red shirt. The pervading hush is for my sake. Painless after all, I lie exhausted, but not so unhappy. White and beautiful are the faces around me. The heads are bared of their fire-caps. The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. Distant and dead resuscitate. They show as the dial or move as the hands of me. I am the clock myself. I am an old artillerist. I tell of my forts bombardment. I am there again. Again the long roll of the drummers. Again the attacking cannon mortars. Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive. I take part. I see and hear the whole. The cries, curses, roar. The plaudits for well-aimed shots. The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip. Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs. The fall of grenades through the rent-roof. The fan-shaped explosion. The whiz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general. He furiously waves with his hand. He gasps through the clot. Mind not me. Mind the entrenchments. 44. Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth. I tell not the fall of Alamo. Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo. The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo. Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men, retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their baggage for breast-works. Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies. Nine times their number was the price they took in advance. Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone. They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their arms, and marched back prisoners of war. They were the glory of the race of rangers. Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship. Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate. Bearded, sun-burnt, dressed in the free costume of hunters. Not a single one over thirty years of age. The second first day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred. It was beautiful early summer. The work commenced about five o'clock, and was over by eight. None obeyed the command to kneel. Some made a mad and helpless rush. Some stood stark and straight. A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart. The living and dead lay together. The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt. The newcomers saw them there. Some half-killed attempted to crawl away. These were dispatched with bayonets, or battered with the blunts of muskets. A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more came to release him. The three were all torn and covered with the boy's blood. At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies. That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men. Thirty-five. Would you hear of an old time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? Listen to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. Our foe was no skulk in his ships, I tell you, said he. His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be. Along the lower eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him. The yards entangled, the cannon touched. My captain lashed fast with his own hands. We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water. On our lower gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sundown, fighting at dark. Ten o'clock at night. The full moon well up. Our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported. The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the aft hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the sentinels. They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. Our frigate takes fire. The other asks if we demand quarter, if our colors are struck and the fighting done. Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain. We have not struck, he composedly cries. We have just begun our part of the fighting. Only three guns are in use. One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main mast. Two well served with grape and canister, silence his musketry, and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main top. They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment's cease. The leaks gain fast on the pumps. The fire eats toward the powder magazine. One of the pumps has been shot away. It is generally thought we are sinking. Serene stands the little captain. He is not hurried. His voice is neither high nor low. His eyes give more light to us than our battle lanterns. Toward twelve, there in the beams of the moon. They surrender to us. Thirty-six, stretched and still lies the midnight. Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness. Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking. Preparations to pass to the one we have conquered. The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders, through a countenance white as a sheet. Nearby the corpse of the child that served in the cabin. The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers. The flames spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below. The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty. Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves. Dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars. Cut of cordage. Dangle of rigging. Slight shock of the sooth of waves. Black and impassive guns. Litter of powder parcels. Strong scent. A few large stars overhead. Silent and mournful shining. Delicate sniffs of sea breeze. Smells of seji grass and fields by the shore. Death messages given in charge to survivors. The hiss of the surgeon's knife. The gnawing teeth of his saw. Wheeze, cluck. Swash of falling blood. Short wild scream. And long, dull tapering groan. These sew. These irretrievable. Thirty-seven. You laggards there on guard. Look to your arms. In at the conquered doors they crowd. I am possessed. Embod all presences outlawed or suffering. Myself in prison shaped like another man. And feel the dull, unintermitted pain. For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch. It is I let out in the morning. And barred at night. Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to jail. But I am handcuffed to him and walk by his side. I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one, with sweat on my twitching lips. Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. Not a caller a patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp. My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarled. Away from me people retreat. Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them. I project my hat. Sit shame-faced, and beg. Thirty-eight. Enough! Enough! Enough! Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back. Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head. Slumbers, dreams, gaping. I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. That I could forget the mockers and insults. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers. That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. I remember now. I resume the overstayed fraction. The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves. Corpses rise. Gashes heal. Fastenings roll from me. I troop forth replenished, with supreme power. One of an average unending procession. In land and sea coast we go, and pass all boundary lines. Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth. The blossoms we wear in our hats. The growth of thousands of years. Eleves, I salute you. Come forward. Continue your annotations. Continue your questionings. 39. The friendly and flowing savage. Who is he? Is he waiting for civilization? Or past it, and mastering it? Is he some south-westerner raised outdoors? Is he Canadian? Is he from the Mississippi country, Iowa, Oregon, California, the mountains, prairie life, bush life, or sailor from the sea? Wherever he goes, men and women accept and desire him. They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. If you're lawless as snowflakes, words, simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter, and naivete, slow stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations. They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers. They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath. They fly out of the glance of his eyes. 40. Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask. Lie over. You light surfaces only. I force surfaces and depths also. Earth, you seem to look for something at my hands. Say, old topknot, what do you want? Man or woman? I might tell how I like you, but cannot, and might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, and might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give myself. You there, impotent, loose in the knees. Open your scarfed chops till I blow grit within you. Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets. I am not to be denied. I compel. I have stores plenty and to spare. And anything I have, I bestow. I do not ask who you are. That is not important to me. You can do nothing and be nothing, but what I will enfold you. To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean. On his right cheek I put the family kiss. And in my soul I swear I never will deny him. On women fit for conception. I start bigger and nimbler babes. This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics. To anyone dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door, turn the bed closed toward the foot of the bed, let the physician and priest go home. I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will. O despairer, here is my neck. By God, you shall not go down. Hang your whole weight upon me. I dilate you with tremendous breath. I boy you up. Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force. Lovers of me, bafflers of graves. Sleep. I and they keep guard all night. Not doubt, not decease, shall dare to lay finger upon you. I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself. And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so. End of Forty.