 Book seven of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This Liberfuchs recording is in the public domain, recording by phone. Song of the open road. One. A foot and light hearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. Done with indoor complaints, libraries, quarrelless criticisms. Strong and content, I travel the open road. The earth, that is sufficient. I do not want the constellations any nearer. I know they are very well where they are. I know they suffice for those who belong to them. Still here I carry my old delicious burdens. I carry them, men and women. I carry them with me wherever I go. I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them. I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return. Two. You road I enter upon and look around. I believe you are not all that is here. I believe that much unseen is also here. Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference, nor denial. The black with this wooly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person are not denied. The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics. The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the thop, the eloping couple, the early market man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town. They pass. I also pass. Anything passes. None can be interdicted. None but are accepted. None but shall be dear to me. Three. You air that serves me with breath to speak. You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape. You light that wraps me and all things in delicate, equitable showers. You pass worn in irregular hollows by the road signs. I believe you are latent with unseen existences. You are so dear to me. You flag walks of the cities. You strong curbs at the edges. You ferries. You planks and posts of wharves. You timber lined side. You distant ships. You row of houses. You window pierced facades. You roofs. You porches and entrances. You copings and iron guards. You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much. You doors and descending steps. You arches. You grey stones of interminable pavements. You trodden crossings. From all that has touched you, I believe you have imparted to yourselves and now would impart the same secretly to me. From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. Four. The earth expanding right hand and left hand. The picture alive every part in its best light. The music falling in where it is wanted and stopping where it is not wanted. The cheerful voice of the public road. The gay fresh sentiment of the road. Oh highway I travel. Do you say to me do not leave me? Do you say venture not if you leave me you are lost? Do you say I am already prepared. I am well beaten and undenied. Adhere to me. Oh public road I say back I am not afraid to leave you yet I love you. You express me better than I can express myself. You shall be more to me than my poem. I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air and all free poems also. I think I could stop here myself and do miracles. I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like and whoever beholds me shall like me. I think whoever I see must be happy. Five. From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines. Going where I list my own master total and absolute. Listening to others considering well what they say. Pausing searching receiving contemplating gently but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great drafts of space. The east and the west are mine and the north and the south are mine. I am larger better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me. Can repeat over to men and women. You have done such good to me. I would do the same to you. I will recruit for myself and you as I go. I will scatter myself among men and women as I go. I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them. Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me. Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. Six. Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me. Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appeared it would not astonish me. Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. Here a great personal deed has room. Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men. It's a fusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it. Here is the test of wisdom. Wisdom is not finally tested in schools. Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it. Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things and the excellence of things. Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. Now I re-examine philosophies and religions. They may prove well in lecture rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents. Here is realisation. Here is a man tallied. He realises here what he has in him. The past, the future, majesty, love. If they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them. Only the colonel of every object nourishes. Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me? Where is he that undoes stratogens and envelopes for you and me? Here is adhesive notes. It is not previously fashioned. It is apropos. Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers? Do you know the talk of those turning eyeballs? Seven. Here is the efflux of the soul. The efflux of the soul comes from within through empowered gates ever provoking questions. These yearnings, why are they? These thoughts in the darkness, why are they? Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why, when they leave me, do my penance of joy sink flat and blank? Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me? I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass. What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers? What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side? What with some fisherman drawing his same by the shore as I walk by and pause? What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good will? What gives them to be free to mine? Eight. The efflux of the soul is happiness. Here is happiness. I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times. Now it flows unto us. We are rightly charged. Here rises the fluid and attaching character. The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman. The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves than it spouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself. Towards the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old. From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments. Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact. Nine. Alon, whoever you are, come travel with me. Traveling with me, you find what never tires. The earth never tires. The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first. Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first. Be not discouraged. Keep on. There are divine things well enveloped. I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. Alon, we must not stop here. However sweet these laid up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here. However sheltered this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here. However welcomed hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it, but a little while. Ten. Alon, the inducements shall be greater. We will sail pathless and wild seas. We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail. Alon, with power, liberty, the earth, the elements, health, defiance, gaiety, self-esteem, curiosity. Alon, from all formules, from your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests. The stale cadaver blocks up the passage. The burial waits no longer. Alon, yet take warning. He traveling with me needs the best blood, thues, endurance. None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health. Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself. Only those may come who come in sweet and determined bodies. No diseased person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here. I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes. We convince by our presence. Eleven. Listen, I will be honest with you. I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. These are the days that must happen to you. You shall not heap up what is called riches. You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve. You but arrive at the city to which you were destined. You hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you were called by an irresistible call to depart. You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you. What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting. You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands toward you. Twelve. Alone. After the great companions and to belong to them. They too are on the road. They are the swift and majestic men. They are the greatest women. Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas. Sailors of many a ship. Walkers of many a mile of land. Habituaries of many distant countries. Habituaries of far distant dwellings. Trusters of men and women. Observers of cities. Solitary toilers. Pausers and contemplators of tufts. Blossoms, shells of the shore. Dancers at wedding dances. Kissers of brides. Tender helpers of children. Bearers of children. Soldiers of revolts. Standards by gaping graves. Lowerers down of coffins. Journeyers over consecutive seasons. Over the years. The curious years. Each emerging from that which preceded it. Journeyers as with companions. Namely their own diverse phases. Fourth-stepers from the latent unrealized baby days. Journeyers gaily with their own youth. Journeyers with their bearded and well-grained manhood. Journeyers with their womanhood. Ample, unsurpassed, content. Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood. Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breath of the universe. Old age, flowing free with the delicious nearby freedom of death. Thirteen. Alone to that which is endless as it was beginningless. To undergo much tramps of days, rests of nights. To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to. Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys. To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it. To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it. To look up or down, no road, but it stretches and waits for you. However long, but it stretches and waits for you. To see no being, not gods or any, but you also go thither. To see no possession, but you may possess it. Enjoying all without labor or purchase. Abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it. To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens. To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through. To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go. To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them. To gather the love out of their hearts. To take your lovers on the road with you for all that you leave them behind you. To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for travelling souls. All parts away for the progress of souls. All religion, all solid things, arts, governments. All that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. Forever alive, forever forward, stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied. Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men. They go, they go, I know that they go, but I know not where they go. But I know that they go toward the best, toward something great. Whoever you are, come forth, or man or woman, come forth. You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it or though it has been built for you. Out of the dark confinement, out from behind the screen, it is useless to protest. I know all and expose it. Behold, through you as bad as to rest, through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping of people. Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed faces, behold a secret silent loathing and despair. No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession. Another self, a duplicate of everyone, skulking and hiding it goes. Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and blunt in the parlors, in the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere. Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breastbones, hell under the skullbones, under the broad cloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers, keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself, speaking of anything else but never of itself. 14. Alone, through struggles and wars, the goal that was named cannot be countermandant. Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? Yourself? Your nation? Nature? Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. My goal is the call of battle. I nourish active rebellion. He going with me must go well armed. He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. 15. Alone, the road is before us. It is safe. I have tried it. My own feet have tried it well. Be not detained. Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten and the book on the shelf unopened. Let the tools remain in the workshop. Let the money remain unearned. Let the schools stand, mind not decry of the teacher. Let the preacher preach in his pulpit. Let the lawyer plead in the court and the judge expound the law. Camarado, I give you my hand. I give you my love more precious than money. I give you myself before preaching or law. Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? End of Book 7, Recording by Phone Book 8 of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This Libber Fox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phone Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 1. Flood tide below me. I see you face to face. Clouds of the West, Sunday, half an hour high. I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes. How curious you are to me. On the ferry boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious to me than you suppose. And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose. 2. The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day. The simple, compact, well-joined scheme, myself disintegrated, everyone disintegrated, yet part of the scheme. 3. The similitudes of the past and those of the future. The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river. 4. The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away. The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them. 5. The certainty of others. The life, love, sight, hearing of others. 6. Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore. Others will watch the run of the flood tide. 7. Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east. 8. Others will see the islands large and small. 9. Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high. 10. A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb tide. 3. It avails not time nor place, distance avails not. I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence. Just as you feel when you look under river and sky, so I felt. Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd. Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refreshed. Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried. Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked. I too, many and many a time, crossed the river of old. Watched the twelve-months seagulls, saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies. Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left a rest in strong shadow. Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging towards the south. Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams. Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water. Looked on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward. Looked on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet. Looked toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving. Saw the reproach, saw a board those that were near me. Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor. The sailors and work in the rigging or out a stride to sparse. The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine penance, the large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot houses, the white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, the flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, the scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolics and crusts and glistening, the stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the granite storehouses by the docks. On the river, the shadowy group, the big steam-tuck closely flanked on each side by the barges, the hay boat, the belated lighter. On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night, casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of houses and down into the clefts of streets. Four. These and all else were to me the same as they are to you. I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river. The men and women I saw were all near to me. Others the same, others who looked back on me because I looked forward to them. The time will come though I stop here today and tonight. Five. What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is it avails not, distance avails not, and place avails not. I too lived, Brooklyn of Ample Hills was mine. I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island and bathed in the waters around it. I too felt curious abrupt questionings stir within me. In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me. In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me. I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution. I too had received identity by my body that I was I knew was of my body and what I should be I knew I should be of my body. Six. It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. The dark threw its patches down upon me also. The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious. My great thoughts as I supposed them were they not in reality meager. Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil. I am he who know what it was to be evil. I too netted the old knot of contrariety. Blanded, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged. At guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak. Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant. The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me. The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting. Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting. Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest. Was called by my niest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing. Felt their arms on my neck as I stood or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat. Saw many I loved in the street or ferry boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word. Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, knowing, sleeping. Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress. The same old role, a role that is what we make it, as great as we like it, or as small as we like, or both great and small. Seven. Closer yet I approach you. What thought you have of me now? I had as much of you. I laid in my stores in advance. I considered long and seriously of you, before you were born. Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? Who knows for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me? Eight. What can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hempt Manhattan? River and sunset and scallop-edged waves of flood-type. The seagulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter. What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my niest name as approach? What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face? Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you? We understand them, do we not? What I promised without mentioning it, have you not accepted it? What the study could not teach, what the preaching could not accomplish, is accomplished, is it not? Nine. Flow on, river, flow with the flood-type, and ebb with the ebb-type. Frolick on, crusted, and scallop-edged waves. Gorgeous clouds of the sunset, drench with your splendour of me, or the men and women generations after me. Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers. Stand up, tall masts of Manahata. Stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn. Throne baffled in curious brain. Throw out questions and answers. Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution. Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly. Sound out, voices of young men, loudly and musically call me by my niest name. Live, old life, play the part that looks back on the actor or actress. Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it. Consider you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you. Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current. Fly on, sea-birds, fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air. Receive the summer sky you water, and faithfully hold it till old downcast eyes have time to take it from you. Diverge fine spokes of light from the shape of my head or anyone's head in the sunlit water. Come on, ships from the lower bay, pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters. Flaunt away, flags of all nations, be duly lowered at sunset. Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys, cast black shadows at nightfall. Cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses. Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are. You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul. About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinous aromas. Thrive cities, bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers. Expand being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual. Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting. You have waited, you'll always wait, you've done beautiful ministers. We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence-forward. Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us. We use you, and do not cast you aside, we plant you permanently within us. We fathom you not, we love you, there is perfection in you also. You furnish your parts toward eternity, great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul. End of Book 8. Recording by Phone Book 9. Of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman This lip-rocks recording is in the public domain. Recording by Phone Song of the Answerer 1. Now, list to my morning's romance, I tell the signs of the Answerer 2. To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me 3. A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother 4. How shall the young man know the weather and when of his brother? 5. Tell him to send me the signs, and I stand before the young man face to face 6. And take his right hand in my left hand, and his left hand in my right hand 7. And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for him that answers for all 8. And send these signs. 9. Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final 10. Him they accept, in him live, in him perceive themselves as a mid-light 11. Him they immerse, and he immerses them 12. Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals 13. The profound earth, and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean 14. So tell I my morning's romance, all enjoyments and properties and money 15. And whatever money we'll buy, the best farms, others toiling and planting 15. And he unavoidably reaps to noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building 16. And he domiciles there. 17. Nothing for anyone but what is for him, near and far are for him 18. The ships in the offing, the perpetual shows and marches on land 19. Are for him if they are for anybody 20. He puts things in their attitudes. He puts today out of himself with 21. Basticity and love. 22. He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them. 23. He is the answerer. What can be answered, he answers. And what cannot be answered, he shows how it cannot be answered. 24. A man is a summons and challenge. It is vain to skulk. Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical echoes? 25. Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction. 26. He indicates the satisfaction and indicates them that beat up and down also. 27. Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely by day or by night. 28. He has the passkey of hearts to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs. 29. His welcome is universal. The flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is. 30. The person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed. 31. Every existence has its idiom. Everything has an idiom and tongue. 32. He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also. 33. One part does not counteract another part. He is the joiner. He sees how they join. 34. He says indifferently and alike, how are you friend to the president at his levy? 35. And he says good day, my brother, to coach that hose in the sugar field, and both understand him and know that his speech is right. 36. He walks with perfect ease in the capital. He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to another, Here is our equal appearing and new. 37. Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, and the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has followed to see. 38. And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, and the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love them. 39. No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it, no matter what the nation that he might find his brothers and sisters there. 40. The English believe he comes of their English stock, a Jew to the Jew he seems, a rust to the rust, usual and near, removed from none. 41. Whoever he looks at in the traveller's coffee house claims him. The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, the Spaniard is sure, and the Island Cuban is sure. 42. The engineer, the deckhand on the Great Lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Pomenox Sound, claims him. 43. The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood. The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them. 44. They are not vile any more. They hardly know themselves. They are so grown. 2. The indications and tally of time, perfect sanity, shows the master among phyllisos. Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts. 45. What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers and their words. The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark. 46. The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, his insight and power encircle things and the human race. He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race. 47. The singers do not beget, only the poet begets. The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough, but rare has today been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the answerer. Not every century, nor every five centuries, has contained such a day for all its names. 48. The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers. The name of each is eye singer, ear singer, head singer, sweet singer, night singer, parlor singer, love singer, weird singer, or something else. 49. All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems. The words of true poems do not merely please. The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty. The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers. The words of true poems are the tough and final applause of science. 50. Divine instinct, breath of fission, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gaiety, suntan, airsweetness, such are some of the words of poems. 51. The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, the answerer. The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the answerer. 52. The words of the true poems give you more than poems. They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else. They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes. 53. They do not seek beauty, they are sought. Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fame, love-sick. 54. They prepare for death, yet are they not to finish, but rather the outset. They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full. 55. Whom they take, they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and to never be quiet again. 55. Our old faillage, always our old faillage, always Florida's green peninsula, always the priceless delta of Louisiana, always the cotton fields of Alabama and Texas, always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver mountains of New Mexico, always soft-breathed Cuba, always the vast slope drained by the southern sea, inseparable with the slopes drained by the eastern and western seas. 56. The area, the 83rd year of these states, the three and a half millions of square miles, the 18,000 miles of sea coasts and bay coasts on the main, the 30,000 miles of river navigation, the seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings, always these and more, branching forth into numberless branches, always the free range and diversity, always the continent of democracy, always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Canada, the snows, always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes, always the west with strong native persons, the increasing density there, the habitants, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders, all sites, south, north, east, all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, all characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed. Through Manahata streets I walk in, these things gathering, on interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up, sunlight by day on the valley of the Suscahana, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rapa Hanok, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware, in their northerly wild beasts of prey haunting the Edirondacks, the hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink, in a lonesome inlet, a shell-drake lost from the flock, sitting on the water rocking silently, in farmer's barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done, they rest standing, they are too tired, a fire on Arctic ice the she-wars lying drowsily while her cubs play around, the hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed, the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the flows, white drifts spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes, on solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together, in primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk, in winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great drought swimming, in lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly high beyond the treetops, below the red cedar festooned with Tlandria, the pines and cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat, rude boats descending the big paddy, climbing plants, parasites with coloured flowers and berries enveloping huge trees, the waving drapery on the live oak trailing long and low, noiselessly waived by the wind, the camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper fires and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses feeding from troughs, the shadows gleams up under the leaves of the old sycamore trees, the flames with the black smoke from the pitch pine curling and rising, southern fisherman fishing, the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast, the shad fishery and the herring fishery, the large sweep sains, the wind lasses on shore worked by horses, the clearing, curing and packing houses, deep in the forest in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works, there are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all direction is covered with pine straw, in Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings at the forge by the furnace blaze or at the corn-shocking, in Virginia the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged muletto nurse. On rivers boatmen safely moored at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks, some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle, others sit on the gunnel smoking and talking, late in the afternoon the mockingbird, the American mimic singing in the great dismal swamp, there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress tree and the juniper tree, northward young men of Manahata, the target company from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket mussels all bear bunches of flowers presented by women, children at play or in his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, how his lips move, how he smiles in his sleep, the scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around, California life, the miner bearded dressed in his rude costume, the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the graves one in passing meet solitary just aside the horse path, down in Texas the cotton field, the negro cabins, drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on banks and wharves and circling all, vast darting up and wide the American soul with equal hemispheres, one love, one dilation or pride, in every year the peace talk with the Iroquois, the Aborigines, the Calumet, the pipe of good will, arbitration and endorsement, the sachin blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, the drama of the scalp dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, the setting out of the war party, the long and stealthy march, the single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter of enemies, all the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these states, reminiscences, institutions, all these states compact every square mile of these states without accepting a particle, me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, palmonox fields, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air, the darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the full traveller southward but returning northward early in the spring, the country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows and shouting to them as they loitered to browse by the roadside, the city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, the departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan, evening, me in my room, the setting sun, the setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the center of the room, darting a thwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shyness, the athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the states, each for itself, the money makers, factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windless, lever, pulley, all certainties, the certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, in space, the sporades, the scattered items, the stars, on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, oh, lands, also dear to me, what you are, whatever it is, I, putting it at random in these songs, become a part of that, whatever it is. Southward, dear, I, screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida. Other ways, dear, it tweaks the banks of the Arkansas, the Rio Grande, the Nueches, the Brazos, the Tombigee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan or the Osagee, I, with the spring waters, laughing and skipping and running. Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Pomanoch, I, with parties of snowy herons, wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants, retreating, triumphantly twittering, the kingbird, from piercing the crow with its bell, for amusement, and I, triumphantly twittering, the migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels, and I, feeding and taking turns with the rest. In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind feet, and plunging with his forefeet, the hoofs as sharp as knives, and I, plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate. In the manahatta, streets, piers, shipping, storehouses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, and I, too, of the manahatta, singing thereof, and no less in myself than the whole of the manahatta in itself. Singing the song of these, my ever united lands, my body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand diverse contributions, one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made one identity. Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, cities, labours, deaths, animals, products, war, good and evil. These me, these affording, in all their particulars, the old faeage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them to afford the like to you? Whoever you are, how can I but offer you divine leaves that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but as hear chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable faeage of these states? End of book 10, recording by phone. Book 11 of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This Liberfox recording is in the public domain. Recording by phone. A song of joys. Oh, to make the most jubilant song, full of music, full of manhood, womanhood, infancy, full of common employments, full of grain and trees. Oh, for the voices of animals. Oh, for the swiftness and balance of fishes. Oh, for the dropping of raindrops in a song. Oh, for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song. Oh, the joy of my spirit. It is uncaged. It darts like lightning. It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time. I will have thousands of globes and all time. Oh, the engineer's joys to go with the locomotive. To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam whistle, the laughing locomotive. To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance. Oh, the glissom saunter over fields and hillsides. The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds. The moist fresh stillness of the woods. The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak and all through the forenoon. Oh, the horseman's and horse woman's joys. The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat. The cool gurgling by the ears and hair. Oh, the fireman's joys. I hear the alarm at dead of night. I hear bells, shouts. I pass the crowd. I run. The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure. Oh, the joy of the strong brawn fighter. Towering in the arena in perfect condition. Conscious of power. Thirsting to meet his opponent. Oh, the joy of that vast elemental sympathy. Which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods. Oh, the mother's joys. The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded life. Oh, the of increase, growth, recuperating. The joy of soothing and pacifying. The joy of concord and harmony. Oh, to go back to the place where I was born. To hear the birds sing once more. To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more. And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more. Oh, to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast. To continue and be employed there all my life. The briny and damp smell. The shore. The salt weeds exposed at low water. The work of fishermen. The work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher. I come with my clam rake and spade. I come with my eel spear. Is the tide out? I join the group of clam diggers on the flats. I laugh and work with them. I joke at my work like a metalsome young man. In winter I take my eel basket and eel spear and travel out on foot on the ice. I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice. Behold me, well clothed, going gaily or returning in the afternoon. My brood of tough boys accompany me. My brood of grown and part-grown boys who love to be with no one else so well. As they love to be with me. By day to work with me and by night to sleep with me. Another time in warm weather out in a boat to lift the lobster pots where they are sunk with heavy stones. I know the boys. Out the sweetness of the fifth month's morning upon the water as I row just before sunrise toward the boys. I pull the wicker pots up slantingly. The dark green lobsters are desperate with their claws as I take them out. I insert wooden pegs in the oints of their pincers. I go to all the places one after another and then row back to the shore. There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boiled till their colour becomes scarlet. Another time mackerel taking. For ratios mad for the hook near the surface they seem to fill the water from miles. Another time fishing for rockfish in Chesapeake Bay. I one of the brown-faced crew. Another time trailing for bluefish off Pomanoch. I stand with braced body. My left foot is on the gunnel. My right arm throws far out the coils of slender rope. In sight around me the quick fearing and darting of fifty skiffs my companions. Oh, boating on the rivers. The voyage down the St. Lawrence. The superb scenery. The steamers. The ships sailing. The trains. The occasional thimber raft and raftsmen with long-reaching sweep oars. The little huts on the rafts and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at evening. Oh, something pernicious and dread. Something far away from a puny and pious life. Something unproved. Something in a trance. Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free. Oh, to work in mines or forging iron. Foundry casting. The foundry itself. The rude high roof. The ample and shadowed space. The furnace. The hot liquid poured out and running. Oh, to resume the joys of the soldier. To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer. To feel his sympathy. To behold his calmness. To be warmed in the rays of his smile. To go to battle. To hear the bugles play and the drums beat. To hear the crash of artillery. To see the glittering of the bayonets and musket barrels in the sun. To see men fall and die and not complain. To taste the savage taste of blood. To be so devilish. To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy. Oh, the whale man's joys. Oh, I cruise my old cruise again. I feel the ship's motion under me. I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me. I hear the cry again sent down from the mast head. There she blows. Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest. We descend, wild with excitement. I leap in the lowered boat. We row toward our prey where he lies. We approach stealthy and silent. I see the mountainous mass. Lethargic, basking. I see the harpooner standing up. I see the weapon dart from his vigorous arm. Oh, swift again. Far out in the ocean. The wounded whale. Settling, running to windward, toes me. Again I see him rise to breathe. We row close again. I see a lance driven through his side. Pressed deep, turned in the wound. Again we back off. I see him settle again. The life is leaving him fast. As he rises, his spouts blurt. I see him swim in circles, narrower and narrower. Swiftly cutting the water. I see him die. He gives one convulsive leap in the center of the circle. And then falls flat and still in the bloody foam. Oh, the old manhood of me. My noblest joy of all. My children and grandchildren. My white hair and beard. My largeness, calmness, majesty. Out of the long stretch of my life. Oh, ripened joy of womanhood. Oh, happiness at last. I am more than 80 years of age. I am the most venerable mother. How clear is my mind. How all people draw night to me. What attractions are these beyond any before? What bloom more than the bloom of youth? What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me? Oh, the orator's joys. To inflate the chest. To roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat. To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire with yourself. To lead America. To quell America with a great tongue. Oh, the joy of my soul. Leaning poised on itself. Perceiving identity through materials and loving them. Observing characters and absorbing them. My soul vibrated back to me from them. From sight, hearing, touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like. The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh. My body done with materials. My sight done with my material eyes. Proved to me this day beyond cavill that it is not my material eyes that I see. Nor my material body, which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates. Oh, the farmer's joys. Ohioans, Illinoisans, Wisconsinese, Canadians, Iowans, Kansians, Missourians, Oregonese joys. To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work. To plow land in the fall for winter's own crops. To plow land in the spring for maize. To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall. Oh, to bathe in the swimming bath or in a good place along shore. To splash the water, to walk ankle deep or race naked along the shore. Oh, to realize space, the plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds. To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds as one with them. Oh, the joy and manly selfhood. To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown. To walk with erect carriage, a steppe springy and elastic. To be on gaze or with a flashing eye. To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of her broad chest. To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth. No is doubt the excellent joys of youth. Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face. Joy of the glad, light-beaming day. Joy of the wide-breathed games. Joy of sweet music. Joy of the lighted ballroom and the dancers. Joy of the plenteous dinner. Strong for rouse and drinking. Yet, oh, my soul supreme. No is doubt the joys of pensive thought. Joys of the free and lonesome heart. The tender, gloomy heart. Joys of the solitary walk. The spirit bowed, yet proud. The agonistic throes. The ecstasies. Joys of the solemn musings, day or night. Joys of the thought of death. The great spheres, time and space. Prophetic joys of better, love to your love's ideals. The divine wife. The sweet eternal, perfect comrade. Joy's all-dine-own undying one. Joy's worthy thee, oh, soul. Oh, while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror. No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms. To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable, and nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating the joy of death. The beautiful touch of death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons, myself discharging my excrementicious body to be burned, or rendered to powder, or buried. My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres. My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth. Oh, to attract by more than attraction. How it is I know not, yet behold, the something which obeys none of the rest. It is offensive, never defensive, yet how magnetic it draws. Oh, to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted, to be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand, to look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face, to mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance, to be indeed a god. Oh, to sail to sea in a ship, to leave the steady, unendurable land, to leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses, to leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, to sail and sail and sail. Oh, to have life henceforth a poem of new joys, to dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on, to be a sailor of the world bound for all ports, a ship itself, see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air, a swift and swelling ship, full of rich words, full of joys. End of book 11, recording by phone. Book 12 of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, this Liberfox recording is in the public domain. Recording by phone. Song of the Broad Axe. One. Weapon shapely, naked, worn, head from the mother's bowels drawn, wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, grey-blue leaf by red-heed groan, health produced from little seed-zone, resting the grass amid and upon, to be leaned and to lean on. Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine traits, sights and sounds, long-veried train of an emblem, dabs of music, fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ. Two. Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind. Welcome are lands of pine and oak. Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig. Welcome are lands of gold. Welcome are lands of wheat and maize. Welcome those of the grape. Welcome are lands of sugar and rice. Welcome the cottonlands. Welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato. Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forest, prairies. Welcome the rich borders of rivers, tablelands, openings. Welcome the measureless grazing lands. Welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp. Welcome just as much the other orchard faced lands. Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands. Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged oars. Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc. Lands of iron. Lands of the make of the axe. Three. The log at the wood pile. The axe supported by it. The silven hut. The vine over the doorway. The space cleared for a garden. The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lulled. The wailing and moaning at intervals. The thought of the sea. The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends and the cutting away of masts. The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses and barns. The sentiment or narrative. The voyage at a venture of men, families, goods. The disembarkation. The founding of a new city. The voyage of those who sought a new England and found it. The outset anywhere. The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette. The slow progress. The scant fare. The axe. The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons. The beauty of wood boys and wood men with their clear untrimmed faces. The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves. The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies. The boundless impatience of restraint. The loose drift of character. The inkling through random types. The solidification. The butcher in the slaughterhouse. The hands aboard schooners and sloops. The raftsmen. The pioneer. Lumbermen in their winter camp. Daybreak in the woods. Stripes of snow on the limbs of trees. The occasional snapping. The glad clear sound of one's own voice. The merry song. The natural life of the woods. The strong day's work. The blazing fire at night. The sweet taste of supper. The talk. The bed of hemlock boughs and the bare skin. The house builder at work in cities or anywhere. The preparatory jointing. Squaring. Sewing. Mortising. The hoist up of beams. The push of them in their places. Laying them regular. And spider tenons in the mortises. According as they were prepared. The blows of mallets and hammers. The attitudes of the men. Their curved limbs. Bending, standing astride the beams. Driving in pins. Holding on by posts and braces. The hooked arm over the plate. The other arm wielding the axe. The floor men forcing the planks close to be nailed. Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers. The echoes resounding through the vacant building. The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way. The six framing men. Two in the middle and two at each end. Carefully bearing on their shoulders. A heavy stick for a crossbeam. The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands. Rapidly laying down. The long sidewall. 200 feet from front to rear. The flexible rise and fall of backs. The continual click of the trowels striking the bricks. The bricks one after another. Each laid so work man like in its place. And set with a knock of the trowel handle. The piles of materials. The mortar on the mortarboards. And the steady replenishing by the hot water. The trowels. The piles of materials. The mortar on the mortarboards. And the steady replenishing. The holes on the bricks. Theعت the paycheckmen. Awesomen. Sparmakers in the sparryard. The swarming row. Of well-grown apprentices. The swing of their axes on the square. You blog shaping it toward the shape of a mast. The brisk short crackle of the steel. Driven slantingly into the pine. The butter collar. Chips flying off in great flakes and slivers. The limber motion. and hips in easy costumes. The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulkheads, floats, stays against the sea. The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-packed square. The arriving engines, the horse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring. The strong command through the fire trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water. The slender spasnic blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders and their execution. The crash and cut-away of connecting woodwork, or through floors if the fire smolders under them. The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows, the forger at his forge furnace and the user of iron after him. The maker of the axe, large and small, and the welder and temperor. The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his thumb. The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket. The shadowy procession of the portraits of the past users also. The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers. The far-off Assyrian edifice and Misra edifice. The Roman lictors preceding the consuls. The antique European warrior with his axe in combat. The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head. The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither. The siege of revolted legios determined for liberty. The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley. The sack of an old city in its time. The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly. Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness. Deeds freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands. Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing. The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, the list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust. The power of personality just or unjust. Muscle and pluck forever. What invigorates life invigorates death, and the dead advance as much as the living advance, and the future is no more uncertain than the present, for the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatess of the earth and of man, and nothing endures but personal qualities. What do you think endures? Do you think a great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? Or a prepared constitution? Or the best-built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? Or any chef-durs of engineering, forts, armaments? Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves. They fail their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them. The show passes, all does well enough, of course, all does very well, till one flash of defiance. A great city is that which has the greatest men and women. If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world. Five. Nor the place where a great city stands is not a place of stretched wharves, docks, manufacturers, deposits of produce merely, nor the place of ceaseless salutes of newcomers or the anchor lifters of the departing, nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plenteous, nor the place of the most numerous population, where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards, where the city stands that is beloved by deeds and loves them in return and understands them, where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds, where thrift is in its place and prudence is in its place, where the men and women think lightly of the lords, where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases, where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons, where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unripped waves, where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority, where the citizen is always the head and ideal and president, mayor, governor, and what not are agents for pay, where children are taught to be lost to themselves and to depend on themselves, where equanimity is illustrated in affairs, where speculations on the soul are encouraged, where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men, where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men, where the city of the faithfulest friends stands, where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, where the city of the healthiest father stands, where the city of the best-bodied mother stands, there the great city stands, six, how beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed, how the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look, all waits or goes by default till a strong being appears, a strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe, when he or she appears materials are over-old, the dispute on the soul stops, the old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back or laid away, what is your money-making now, what can it do now, what is your respectability now, what are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books now, where are your jibes of being now, where are your cavals about the soul now, seven, a sterile landscape covers the oar, there is as good as the best for all the forbidding appearance, there is the mine, there are the miners, the forged furnace is there, the melt is accomplished, the hammersmen are at hand with their tongues and hammers, what always served and always serves is at hand, than this nothing has better served, it has served all, served the fluent tongueed and subtle sensed Greek, and long air to Greek, served in building the buildings that last longer than any, served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustani, served the Mount Razor on the Mississippi, served those whose relics remain in Central America, served albic temples in woods or on plains with unhewn pillars and the druids, served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills of Scandinavia, served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves, served the pots of the eruptions of the gods, served the pastoral tribes and nomads, served the long distant kelp, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic, served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia, served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the makings of those for war, served all great works on land and all great works on the sea, before the medieval ages and before the medieval ages, served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead, ate. I see the European headsman, he stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, and leans on a ponderous axe, whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman, whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky? I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs, I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts, ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached ministers, rejected kings, rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest. I see those who in any land have died for the good cause, the seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out. Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out. I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe, both blade and health are clean, they spurt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasped no more the necks of queens. I see the headsman withdraw and become useless. I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy. I see no longer any axe upon it. I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race, the newest, largest race. America, I do not fount my love for you, I have what I have. The axe leaps, the solid forest gives fluid utterances, they tumble forth, they rise and form, hut, tent, landing, survey, flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, shingle, rail, prop, windscot, lamb, lass, panel, gable, citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jackplane, mallet, wedge, rounds, chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vein, sash, floor, workbox, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not, capitals of states and capital of the nation of states, long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick, Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seeds. The shapes arise, shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that neighbours them, cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the pinup scot or cannebec, dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little lakes or on the Columbia, dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly gatherings, the characters and fun, dwellers along the St. Lawrence or north in Canada or down by the Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts, sealfishers, whalers, arctic seamen, breaking passages through the ice. The shapes arise, shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets, shapes of the two threaded tracks of railroads, shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches, ships of the fleets of barges, toes, lake and canal craft, river craft, shipyards and dry docks along the eastern and western seas and in many a bay and by-place, the live oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatak roots for knees, the ships themselves on their ways, the tears of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside, the tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge and bead plain, ten. The shapes arise, the shape measured, sold, jacked, joined, stained, the coffin shaped for the dead to lie within in his shroud, the shape got out in posts in the bedstead posts in the posts of the bride's bed, the shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle, the shape of the floor planks, the floor planks for dancers' feet, the shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children, the shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof of the well-married young man and woman, the roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste wife and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work, the shapes arise, the shape of the prisoner's place in the courtroom and of him or her seated in the place, the shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker, the shape of the shamed and angry stares trod by sneaking footsteps, the shape of the sly sati and the adulterous unwholesome couple, the shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings, the shape of the stepladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinioned arms, the sheriff unhand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipped crown, the dangling of the rope, the shapes arise, shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances, the door passing the deceivered friend flushed and in haste, the door that admits good news and bad news, the door whence the son left home confident and puffed up, the door he entered again from a long and scandalous absence, diseased, broken down, without innocence, without means. 11. Her shape arises. She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever. The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled. She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concealed from her. She is nonetheless considerate or friendly therefore. She is the best beloved, it is without exception, she has no reason to fear and she does not fear. Oats, quarrels, hiccuped songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes. She is silent, she is possessed of herself, they do not offend her. She receives them as the laws of nature receive them. She is strong, she too is a law of nature, there is no law stronger than she is. 12. Domain shapes arise. Shapes of democracy total, result of centuries. Shapes ever projecting other shapes. Shapes of turbulent manly cities. Shapes of the friends and home givers of the whole earth. Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth. End of book 12, recording by phone.