 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Gordon MacKenzie. Leaves of Grass. By Walt Whitman. Book 15. A Song for Occupations. 1. A Song for Occupations. In the labor of engines and trades, in the labor of fields, I find the developments and find the eternal meanings. Work men and work women. Where all education's practical and ornamental well displayed out of me, what would it amount to? Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to? Were I to you as the boss, employing and paying you, would that satisfy you? The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms. A man like me and never the usual terms. Neither a servant nor a master I. I take no sooner a large price than a small price. I will have my own whoever enjoys me. I will be even with you and you shall be even with me. If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop. If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend. If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome. If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake. If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table. If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why, I often meet strangers in the street and love them. Why, what have you thought of yourself? Is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the president greater than you or the rich better off than you or the educated wiser than you? Because you are greasy or pimpled or were once drunk or a thief or that you are diseased or rheumatic or a prostitute or from frivolity or impotence or that you are no scholar and never saw your name in print. Do you give in that you are any less immortal? Two, souls of men and women. It is not you I call unseen unheard, untouchable and untouching. It is not you I go argue, pro and con about and to shelter whether you are alive or no. I own publicly who you are. If nobody else owns, grown, half-grown and babe of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other I see and all else behind or through them, the wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband, the daughter, and she is just as good as the son, the mother, and she is every bit as much as the father, offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades, young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms, watermen, merchant men, coasters, immigrants, all these I see, but nyer and farther the same I see. None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me. I bring what you much need, yet always have, money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good. I send no agent or medium offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself. There is something that comes to one now and perpetually. It is not what is printed, preached, discussed. It eludes discussion and print. It is not to be put in a book. It is not in this book. It is for you, whoever you are. It is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you. It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readyest. It is ever provoked by them. You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it. You may read the president's message and read nothing about it there. Nothing in the reports from the State Department or Treasury Department or in the Daily Papers or weekly papers or in the Census or revenue returns, prices, current or any accounts of stock. Three. The sun and stars that float in the open air, the apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is something grand. I do not know what it is except that it is grand and that it is happiness and that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or bonmost or reconnaissance and that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us and without luck must be a failure for us and not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency. The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that with perfect complacence devours all things, the endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows, the wonder everyone sees and everyone else he sees and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever. What have you reckoned them for, camarado? Have you reckoned them for your trade or farm work or for the profits of your store or to achieve yourself a position or to fill a gentleman's leisure or a lady's leisure? Have you reckoned that the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture or men and women that they might be written of or songs sung or the attraction of gravity and the great laws and harmonious combinations and the fluids of the air as subjects for the savants or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names or that the growth of seeds is for agriculture tables or agriculture itself? Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections and the practice handed along in manufacturers will we rate them so high? Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection. I rate them as high as the highest. Then a child, born of a woman and man, I rate beyond all rate. We thought our union grand and our constitution grand. I do not say they are not grand and good for they are. I am this day just as much in love with them as you. Then I am in love with you and with all my fellows upon the earth. We consider Bibles and religions divine. I do not say they are not divine. I say they have all grown out of you and may grow out of you still. It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life. Leaves are not more shed from the trees or trees from the earth than they are shed out of you. For the sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are. The president is there in the White House for you. It is not you who are here for him. The secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them. The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you. Laws, courts, the forming of states, the characters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and malls are all for you. List close, my scholars, dear. Doctrines, politics and civilization exerge from you. Sculpture and monuments and anything inscribed anywhere are tallied in you. The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach is in you this hour and myths and tales the same. If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be? The most renowned poems would be ashes. Orations and plays would be vacuums. All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it. Did you think it was in the white or grey stone or the lines of the arches and cornices? All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments. It is not the violins and the cornets. It is not the oboe nor the beating drums nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza nor that of the men's chorus nor that of the woman's chorus. It is nearer and farther than they five. Will the whole come back then? Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking glass? Is there nothing greater or more? Does all sit there with you with the mystic unseen soul, strange and hard that paradox true I give? Objects gross and the unseen soul are one, house-building, measuring, sawing the boards, blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-dressing, ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers, the pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal kiln and brick kiln, coal mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts look through smudged faces? Ironworks forge fires in the mountains or by riverbanks, men around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the dew combining of ore, limestone, coal, the blast furnace and the puddling furnace, the loop-lump at the bottom of the melt at last, the rolling mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean-shaped trail for railroads, oilworks, silkworks, white leadworks, the sugar-house, steamsaws, the great mills and factories, stone-cutting shapely trimmings for facades or windows or door lintels, the mallet, the tooth chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, the caulking iron, the kettle of boiling vault cement, and the fire under the kettle, the cotton bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the Sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw and all the work with ice, the work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker, goods of the gutter-percha, papier-mache, colours, brushes, brush-making, glaziers' implements, the veneer and glupot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter and glasses, the shears and flat iron, the awl and knee-strap, the pint, measure and quart measure, the counter and stool, the writing pen of quill or metal, the making of all sorts of edged tools, the brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done by brewers, winemakers, vinegar-makers, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling, lime-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking, electro-plating, electro-typing, stereotyping, stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines, plowing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam-wagons, the cart of the carmen, the omnibus, the ponderous-drey, pyro-techny, letting off-colored fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets, beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher in his killing clothes, the pens of live pork, the killing hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub-gutting, the gutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous winter-work of pork-packing, flower-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and the half-and-quarter-barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees, the men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters, fish-boats, canals, the hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard, store, or factory. These shows all near you by day and night. Workmen, whoever you are, your daily life, in that and them, the heft of the heaviest, in that and them far more than you estimated, and far less also, in them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me, in them, not yourself, you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of estimation, in them the development good, in them all themes, hints, possibilities. I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile. I do not advise you to stop. I do not say leadings you thought great are not great. But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to. Six. Will you seek a far off? You surely come back at last in things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best. In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour, man in the first, you see or touch always in friend, brother, niest neighbor, woman in mother, sister, wife. The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere. You work women and work men of these states have your own divine and strong life and all else giving place to men and women like you. When the psalm sings instead of the singer, when the script preaches instead of the preacher, when the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk, when I can touch the body of books by night or by day and when they touch my body back again, when a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convents, when the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night watchman's daughter, when warranty deeds loaf in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions, I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women like you. End of Book 15. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit librivox.org Recording by Brett Barney WhitmanArchive.org Leads of Grass by Walt Whitman Book 16. A Song of the Rolling Earth 1. A Song of the Rolling Earth and of Words According Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines, those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words. Substantial words are in the ground and sea. They are in the air. They are in you. Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friend's mouths? No, the real words are more delicious than they. Human bodies are words, myriads of words. In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's well-shaped, natural, gay, every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame. Air, soil, water, fire. Those are words. I myself am a word with them. My qualities interpenetrate with theirs. My name is nothing to them. Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire know of my name? A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings. The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings and meanings also. The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth. The masters know the earth's words and use them more than audible words. Amelioration is one of the earth's words. The earth neither lags nor hastens. It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump. It is not half-beautiful only. Defects and excrescences show just as much as perfections show. The earth does not withhold. It is generous enough. The truths of the earth continually wait. They are not so concealed, either. They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print. They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly. Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter. I speak not, yet, if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you? To bear, to better. Lacking these of what avail am I? Akush, Akushay. Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? Will you squat and stifle there? The earth does not argue, is not pathetic, has no arrangements, does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out. Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out. The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself, possesses still underneath. Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers. Underneath these, possessing words never fail. To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail. The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail. Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail. Of the interminable sisters, of the ceaseless cattillions of sisters, of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters, the beautiful sister we know dances on, with the rest. With her ample back, towards every beholder, with the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age, sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturbed, holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes glance back from it, glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none, holding a mirror day and night, tirelessly before her own face. Seen at hand or seen at a distance, duly the twenty-four appear in public every day, duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion, looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them, from the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance, from the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things, from the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of the sky, from our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them, every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice, with the same companions. Embracing men, embracing all, exceed the three hundred and sixty-five, resistlessly round the sun. Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close, three hundred and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they. Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading, sunshine, storm, cold, heat, foreverwithstanding, passing, carrying, the soul's realization and determination still inheriting, the fluid vacuum around and ahead, still entering and dividing, no balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, swift, glad, content, unberieved, nothing losing, of all, able and ready at any time to give strict account, the Divine Ship sails the Divine Sea, too. Whoever you are, motion and reflection are especially for you. The Divine Ship sails the Divine Sea for you. Whoever you are, you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid. You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, for none more than you are the present and the past, for none more than you is immortality. Each man to himself and each woman to herself is the word of the past and present and the true word of immortality. No one can acquire for another not one. No one can grow for another not one. The song is to the singer and comes back most to him. The teaching is to the teacher and comes back most to him. The murderer is to the murderer and comes back most to him. The theft is to the thief and comes back most to him. The love is to the lover and comes back most to him. The gift is to the giver and comes back most to him. It cannot fail. The oration is to the orator. The acting is to the actor and actress, not to the audience. And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own or the indication of his own. 3. I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete. The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken. I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth. There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth. No politics, song, religion, behavior, or whatnot is of account unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth. Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth. I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love. It is that which contains itself which never invites and never refuses. I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words, all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth, toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth, toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch. I swear I see what is better than to tell the best. It is always to leave the best untold. When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots. My breath will not be obedient to its organs. I become a dumb man. The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow. All or any is best. It is not what you anticipated. It is cheaper, easier, nearer. Things are not dismissed from the places they held before. The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before. Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades are as real as before, but the soul is also real. It too is positive and direct. No reasoning, no proof has established it. Undeniable growth has established it. Four. These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls. If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then? If they had not referenced to you in a special, what were they then? I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best. I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold. Say on, sayers. Sing on, singers. Delve, mold, pile the words of the earth. Work on, age after age. Nothing is to be lost. It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use. When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear. I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail. I swear to you they will understand you and justify you. The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you and encloses all and is faithful to all. He and the rest shall not forget you. They shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they. You shall be fully glorified in them. Youth, day, old age, and night. Youth, large, lusty, loving. Youth full of grace, force. Fascination. Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace? Force, fascination. Day full-blown and splendid. Day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter. The night follows close with millions of stars and sleep and restoring darkness. For more information see LibriVox.org Today's reading by Hugh McGuire Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Book 17 Birds of Passage Song of the Universal 1 Come, said the Muse Sing me a song no poet has yet chanted. Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours amid the measureless grossness and the slag, enclosed and safe within its center heart nestles the seed perfection. By every life a share or more or less. None born, but it is born. Concealed or unconcealed, the seed is waiting. Too low. Kenied towering science as from tall peaks the modern overlooking successive absolute fiat's issuing. Yet again low, the soul above all science. For it has history gathered like husks around the globe. For it, the entire star myriads roll through the sky. Inspiral roots by long detours. As a much tracking ship upon the sea. For it the partial to the permanent flowing. For it the real to the ideal tens. For it the mystic evolution. Not the right only justified what we call evil also justified. From their masks no matter what. From the huge festering trunk from craft and guile and tears. Health to emerge and joy, joy universal. Out of the bulk the morbid and the shallow. Out of the bad majority the varied countless frauds of men and states. Electric, antiseptic yet cleaving, suffusing all. Only the good is universal. Three, over the mountain growths disease and sorrow. An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering high in the pure happier air. From imperfections, murkiest cloud. Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, one flash of heaven's glory. To fashion customs discord. To the mad babbled in the deafening orgies. Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard. From some far shore the final chorus sounding. Oh the blessed eyes, the happy hearts. That see, that know the guiding thread so fine. Along the mighty labyrinth. Four. And thou, America. For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality. For these not from thyself thou hast arrived. Thou too surroundest all. Embracing, carrying, welcoming all. Thou too by pathways broad and new. To the ideal tendest. The measured faiths of other lands, the grandiers of the past. Are not for thee but grandiers of thine own. Deific faiths and amplitudes absorbing, comprehending all, all eligible to all. All, all for immortality. Love the light silently wrapping all. Nature's amelioration. Blessing all. The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards, divine and certain. Forms, objects, growths, humanities. To spiritual images ripening. Give me, oh God, sing that thought. Give me, give him or her, I love this quenchless faith. In thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us belief in plan of thee enclosed in time and space, health, peace, salvation, universal. Is it a dream? Nay, but the lack of it, the dream. And failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream, and all the world a dream. Pioneers, oh pioneers, come my ten-faced children, follow well in order. Get your weapons ready. Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers, oh pioneers. For we cannot tarry here. We must march, my darlings. We must bear the brunt of danger. We, the youthful, sinewy races, all the rest on us depend. Pioneers, oh pioneers. You youths, western youths, so impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship. Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson. Pioneer, oh pioneers, all the past we leave behind. We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labourer and the march pioneers. Oh pioneers, we detachments steady throwing, down the edges through the passes up the mountain steep, conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways. Pioneers, oh pioneers. We primeval forests felling. We the rivers stemming vexing, we in piercing deep the mines within. We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil up heaving. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Colorado men we are, from the peaks gigantic, from the great Sierras and the high plateaus, from the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come. Pioneers, oh pioneers, from Nebraska, from Arkansas, central inland race we are, from Missouri, with the continental blood, intervened. All the hands of comrades clasping, all the southern, all the northern, pioneers, oh pioneers. Oh resistless, restless race, oh beloved race in all. Oh my breast aches with tender love for all. Oh I mourn you yet exult, I am wrapped with love for all. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Raise the mighty mother mistress, waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress. Then your heads all, raise the fanged and war-like mistress, stern, impassive, weapon, mistress, pioneers, oh pioneers. See my children, resolute children, by those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter. Ages back and ghostly millions frowning there, behind us urging pioneers, oh pioneers. On and on the compact ranks, with the sessions ever waiting. With the places of the dead quickly filled through the battle, through defeat, moving yet, never stopping. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Oh, to die advancing on. Are there some of us to droop and die, has the hour come? Then upon the march we fittest die, soon ensure the gap is filled. Pioneers, oh pioneers. On pulses of the world, falling in they beat for us, with western movement beat, holding singular together, steady moving to the front. All for us, pioneers, oh pioneers. Life's involved and varied pageants. All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, all the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves. Pioneers, oh pioneers. All the hapless, silent lovers, all the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous in the wicked, all the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying. Pioneers, oh pioneers. I too, with my soul and body, we, curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Low the darting, bowling orb, low the brother, orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, all the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams. Pioneers, oh pioneers. These are of us, they are with us, all for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind. We, today's procession heading, we the root for travel clearing. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Oh, you daughters of the West, oh you young and elder daughters, oh you mothers and you wives, never must you be divided in our ranks. You move, united, pioneers. Oh, pioneers. Minstrels, latent on the prairies, shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work. Soon I hear you coming, warbling, soon you rise and trample mid us. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Not for delectations sweet, not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious, not the riches, safe and pawling, not for us, the tame enjoyment. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Do the feasters gluttonous feast? Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? Have they locked and bolted doors? Still be ours the diet hard and the blanket on the ground. Pioneers, oh pioneers. As the night descended, was the road of late so toilsome, did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious. Pioneers, oh pioneers. Till with the sound of trumpet far, far off the daybreak call hark, how loud and clear I hear it wind. Swift to the head of the army, swift spring to your places, Pioneers, oh pioneers. To you, whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walk of dreams. I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands. Even now your features, joys, speech, house trade manners, troubles, follies, costumes, crimes dissipate away from you. Your true soul and body appear before me. They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you. That you be my poem, I whisper with lips close to your ear. I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. Oh, I have been dilatory and dumb. I should have made my way straight to you long ago. I should have blabbed nothing but you. I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all in common, make the hymns of you. None has understood you, but I understood you. None has done justice to you. You have not done justice to yourself. None but has found you imperfect. I only find no imperfection in you. None would subordinate you. I only am he who will ever consent to subordinate you. I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups in the center figure of all. From the head of the center figure spreading a nimbus of gold-colored light, but I paint myriads of heads, but I paint no head without its nimbus of gold-colored light. From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams effulgently flowing forever. Oh, I could sing such grand years and glories about you. You have not known what you are. You have slumbered upon yourself all your life. Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time. What you have done returns already in mockeries. Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you. Underneath them and within them I see you lurk. I pursue you where none else has pursued you, silence the desk, the flippant expression the night, the accustomed routine. If these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me. The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion. If these balk others, they do not balk me. The pertoperil, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you. There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you. No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you. No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to anyone, except I give the like carefully to you. I sing the songs of glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of glory of you. Whoever you are, claim your own at any hazard. These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you. These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they. These furies, elements, storms, motions of nature, rows of apparent disillusion. You are he or she who is master or mistress over them, master or mistress in your own right over nature, elements, pain, passion, disillusion. The hopples fall from your ankles. You find an unfailing sufficiency, old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are, promulgates itself through birth, life, death, burial. The means are provided, nothing is scanted through anger's losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui. What you are picks its way. France, the 18th year of these states. A great year in place, a harsh discordant natal scream out sounding to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet. I walk the shores of my eastern sea, heard over the waves the little voice, saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings, was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those born away in the tumbrels, was not so desperate at the batches of death, was not so shocked at the repeated fuselads of the guns. Pale, silent stern, what could I say to that long, accrued retribution? Could I wish humanity different? Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? Liberty, oh mate for me, here too the blaze, the graveshot and the axe in reserve to fetch them out in case of need, here too through long repressed can never be destroyed, here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic, here too demanding full arrears of vengeance. Hence I sign this salute over the sea, and I do not deny the terrible red berth in baptism, but remember the little voice that I heard wailing and wait with perfect trust no matter how long. And from today, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed cause as for all lands, and I send these words to Paris with my love, and I guess some chansonnier there will understand them. For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it, oh I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be drowning all that would interrupt them. Oh I think the East wind brings a triumphful and free march, it reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness, I will run, transpose it in words to justify, I will yet sing a song for you, nafam. Myself and mine, gymnastics ever, to stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children, to speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people, and to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea, not for an embroiderer. There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also, but for the fiber of things, and for inherent men and women, not to chisel ornaments, but to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous, supreme gods, that the states may realize them walking and talking, let me have my own way, let others promulgate the laws, I will make no count of the laws, let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation and conflict, I praise no eminent men, I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy, who are you and what are you secretly guilty of all your life, will you turn aside all your life, will you grub and chatter all your life, and who are you babbling by rote years, pages, languages, reminiscence, unwitting today, that you do not know how to speak properly a single word, let others finish specimens I never finish specimens, I start them by exhaustless laws as nature does, fresh, modern continually, I give nothing as duties, what others give as duties I give as living impulses, shall I give the hearts action as a duty, let others dispose of questions I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions, who are they I see and touch and what about them, what about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections, I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies as I myself do, I charge you for ever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself, I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, I charge you to leave all free as I have left all free, after me vista, oh I see life is not short, but immeasurably long, I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate and early riser, a steady grower, every hour the semen of centuries and still of centuries, I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth, I perceive I have no time to lose, year of meteors, 1859 to 1860, year of meteors, brooding year, I would bind in words retrospective of some of your deeds and signs, I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidente ad, I would sing how an old man tall with white hair mounted the scaffold in Virginia, I was at hand silent I stood with teeth shut closed, I watched, I stood very near you old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling, with age and with your unhealed wounds you mounted the scaffold, I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the states, the tables of population and products I would sing of your ships and their cargoes, the proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some filled with immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold, songs thereof I would sing to all that hitherward comes would welcome give and you would I sing fair stripling, welcome to you from me young Prince of England, remember you surging Manhattan's crowds, as you passed with your courtage of nobles, there in the crowd stood I and singled you out with attachment, nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay, well shaped and stately the great eastern swam up my bay, she was six hundred feet long, her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing, nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, nor the strange huge meteor procession dazzling and clear shooting above our heads, a moment, a moment long it sailed its balls of unearthly light over our heads then departed, dropped in the night and was gone of such and fitful as they I sing with gleams from them would gleam I would attach these chants, your chants, oh year all mottled with evil and good, year of forebodings, year of comets and meteors transient and strange, low, even here one equally transient and strange, as I fit through you hastily soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant, what am I myself but one of your meteors, with antecedents, one, with antecedents with my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages with all which had it not been, I would not now be here as I am with Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome, with the kelp, the Scandinavian, the album, the Saxon, with antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, with the poet, the scald, the saga, the myth and the oracle, with the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader and the monk, with those old continents once we have come to this new convent, with the fading kingdoms and kings over there, with the fading religions and priests, with the small shores we look back from our own large and present shores, with countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years, you and me arrived, America arrived and making this year, this year, sending itself ahead countless years to come, to, oh but it is not the years, it is I, it is you, we touch all laws and tally all antecedents, we are the scald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more, we stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good, all swings around us, there is as much darkness as light, the very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us, its sun and its again all swing around us, as for me, torn, stormy amid these vehement days, I have the idea of all and am all and believe in all, I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part, have I forgotten any part, anything in the past, come to me whoever and whatever till I give you recognition, I respect the Syria, China, Tutonia and the Hebrews, I adopt each theory, myth, God and demigod, I see that the old accounts, Bibles, genealogies are true without exception, I assert that all past days were what they must have been and that they could know how have been better than they were and that today is what it must be and that America is and that today and America could know how be better than they are, three, in the name of these states and in your and my name the past and in the name of these states and in your and my name the present time, I know that the past was great and the future will be great and I know that both curiously conjoined in the present time for the sake of him I typify for the common average man's sake for your sake if you are he and that where I am or you are this present day there is the center of all days all races and there is meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days or ever will come End of Book 17 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information see LibriVox.org Recording by Hugh McGuire, Montreal November 18, 2005 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Book 18 A Broadway pageant One Over the western sea hither from Nifon come Curdius The Swart Cheek two sordid envoys Leaning back in their open barouches bare headed in passive Ride today Through Manhattan Libertad I do not know whether others behold what I behold In the procession along with the nobles of Nifon The errand-bearers bringing up the rear hovering above around or in the ranks marching But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad One million-footed Manhattan un-pent descends to her pavements When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar of love When the round-mouthed guns out of the smoke and smell I love spit their salutes When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me and heaven-clouds canopy my city with delicate thin haze When gorgeous the countless straight stems the forests at the wharves thicken with colors When every ship richly dressed carries her flag at the peak When penance trail and sweet festoons hang from the windows When broadways entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standards when the mass is densest When the façades of the house are alive with people when eyes gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time When the guests from the islands advance When the pageant moves forward visible when the summons is made When the answer that waited thousands of years answers I too, arising, answering descend to the pavements merge with the crowd and gaze with them to superb-faced Manhattan Comrade Americanos, to us then at last the Orient comes to us, my city where tall-topped marbling iron beauties range on opposite sides to walk in the space between Today our antipodes come the originatress comes the nest of languages the bequeathor of poems the race of Eld floored with blood and pensive wrapped with musings hot with passion sultry with perfume with ample and flowing garments with sunburned visage with intense soul and glittering eyes the race of drama comes see my cantible these and more flashing to us from the procession as it moves changing a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us for not the envoys nor the ten Japanese from his island only life and silent the Hindu appears the Asiatic continent itself appears the past the dead the murky night morning of wonder and fable and scruutable the enveloped mysteries the old and unknown hive bees the north the sweltering south eastern Assyria the Hebrews the ancient of ancients vast desolated cities the gliding present all of these and more are in the pageant procession geography the world is in it the great sea the brood of islands Polynesia the coast beyond the coast you henceforth are facing you Libertad from your western golden shores the countries there with their populations the millions en masse are curiously here the swarming marketplaces the temples with idols the end booze Brahmin and Lama Mandarin farmer merchant mechanic and fisherman the singing girl and the dancing girl the ecstatic persons the secluded emperors Confucius himself the great poets and heroes the warriors the castes all trooping up crowding from all directions from the Altei mountains from Tibet from the four winding and far flowing rivers of China from the southern peninsula and the demicontinental islands from Malaysia these are whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me and are seized by me and I am seized by them and friendily held by them till is here them all I chant Libertad for themselves and for you for I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant I am the chanter I chant aloud over the pageant I chant the world on my western sea I chant copious islands beyond thick as stars in the sky I chant the new empire grander than any before as in a vision it comes to me I chant America the mistress I chant a greater supremacy I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those groups of sea islands my sail ships and steam ships threading the archipelagos my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind commerce opening the sleep of ages having done its work races reborn refreshed lives works resumed the object I know not but the old the asiatic I surround by the world three and you libertad of the world you shall sit in the middle well poised thousands and thousands of years as today from one side the nobles of asia come to you and tomorrow from the other side the queen of england sends her eldest son to you the sign is reversing the orb is enclosed the ring is circled the journey is done the box lid is but perceptibly open nevertheless the perfume pours copiously out of the whole box young libertad with the venerable asia the all mother be considerate with her now and ever hot libertad for you are all bend your proud neck to the long off mother now sending messages over the archipelago to you bend your proud neck low for once young libertad here the children straying westward so long so wide the tramping here the precedent dim ages debouching westward from paradise so long where the centuries are deadly footing it that way all the while unknown for you for reasons they are justified they are accomplished they shall now be turned the other way also to travel towards youth hence they shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake libertad end of