 Book 3 Part 2 of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman This Liberfox recording is in the public domain. Recording by phone. 25. Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sunrise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me. We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun. We found our own, oh my soul, in the calm and cool of the daybreak. My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself. It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically. Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out then? Come now, I will not be tantalised, you conceive too much of articulation. Do you not know, oh speech, how the buds beneath you are folded? Waiting in the gloom, protected by frost, the dirt proceeding before my prophetical screens? I, underlies in causes, to balance them at last. My knowledge, my life parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things. Happiness, which whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day. My final merit, I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am. Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me. I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me. I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face. With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. 26. Now I will do nothing but listen, to accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals. I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following. Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night. Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work people at their meals. The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick. The judge with hands tight to the desk, his palette lips pronouncing a death sentence. The heavy yoke of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor lifters. The ring of alarm bells, the cry of fire, the whir of swift streaking engines and host cards with premonitory tinkles and coloured lights. The steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars. The slow march played at the head of the association, marching two and two. They go to guard some corpse, to flag tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violoncello, just a young man's heart's complaint. I hear the keyed cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears. It shakes mad sweet pangs through my belly and breast. I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera. Ah, this indeed is music. This suits me. A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me. The orbic flecks of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the train soprano. What work with hers is this? The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies. It wrenches such ardours from me. I did not know I possessed them. It sails me. I dabbed with bare feet. They are licked by the indolent waves. I am cut by bitter and angry hail. I lose my breath. Steeped amid honeyed morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death. At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, and that we call being. Twenty-seven. To be in any form, what is that? Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither. If nothing lay more developed, the quahog in its callous shell were enough. Mine is no callous shell. I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass or stop. They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I'm happy. To touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand. Twenty-eight. Is this, then, a touch, quivering me to a new identity, flames and ether making a rush for my veins, treacherous tip of me breaching and crowding to help them, my flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself? On all sides prairie and provocers stiffening my limbs, straining the utter of my heart for its withheld drip, behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, depriving me of my best as for a purpose, unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and posture fields. Immodestly sliding the fellow senses away. They bribe to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, no consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile, then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. The centuries desert every other part of me. They have left me helpless to a red marauder. They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. I am given up by traitors. I talk wildly. I have lost my wits. I and nobody else am the greatest traitor. I went myself first to the headland. My own hands carried me there. You villain touch. What are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat. Unclench your floodgates. You are too much for me. Twenty-nine. Blind, loving, wrestling touch. Sheathed, hooded, sharp toothed touch. Did it make you ache so? Leaving me? Parting, tracked by arriving. Perpetual payment of perpetual loan. Rich, showering rain and recompense richer afterward. Sprouts take and accumulate. Stand by the curb prolific and vital. Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. Thirty. All truths wait in all things. They neither hasten their own delivery nor resistant. They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon. The insignificant is as big to me as any. What is less or more than a touch? Logic and sermons never convince. The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so. Only what nobody denies is so. A minute and the drop of me settle my brain. I believe the soggy clothes shall become lovers and lamps. And a compend of compence is the meat of a man or a woman. And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other. And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific. And until one and all shall delight us and we them. Thirty one. I believe a leaf of grass is now less than the journey work of the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect and a grain of sand and the egg of the rim. And the treetone is a chef-dure for the highest. And a running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven. And a narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery. And the cow crunching with the oppressed hand surpasses any statue. And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate nice, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, Escalant roots, and I'm stuccoed with crudrupeds and birds all over. And I've distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call anything back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness. In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach. In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones. In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes. In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low. In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky. In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs. In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods. In vain the razor-built oak sails far north to Labrador. I follow quickly. I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff, 32. I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one is dissatisfied. Not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one kneels to another, Nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. So they show their relations to me and I accept them. They bring me tokens of myself. They evince them plainly in their possession. I wonder where they get those tokens. Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? Myself moving forward, then and now and forever. Gathering and showing more always and with velocity. Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them. Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembranceers. Picking out here one that I love and now go with him on brotherly terms. A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses. Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears. Lins glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground. Eyes full of sparkling wickedness. Ears finely cut, flexible moving. His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him. His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. I but use you a minute, then I resign you stallion. Why do I need your paces when I myself out-galloped them, even as I stand or sit passing faster than you? 33. Space and time. Now I see it is true what I guessed at, what I guessed when I loafed on the grass, what I guessed while I lay alone in my bed, and again as I walk the beach under the paling stars of the morning. My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gats. I skirt Sierras, my palms cover continents. I am afoot with my vision, by the city's quadrangular houses in log-huts camping with lumbermen, along the ruts of the term-pipe, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests, prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river, where the panther walks to and fro on the limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter, where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish, where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou, where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail, over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flowered cotton plant, over the rice in its low-moist field, over the sharp-peaked farmhouse, with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters, over the western persimmon, over the long-leaved corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax, over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzard there with the rest, over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze, Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low-scragged limbs, walking the path worn in the grass and be through the leaves of the brush, where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot, where the bat flies in the seventh-month eve, where the great gold buck drops through the dark, where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows through the meadow, where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides, where the cheesecloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the heart's lab, where cobwebs fall in fastoons from the rafters, where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders, wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs, where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating in it myself and looking composedly down, where the life-car is drawn on a slip-news, where the heat hatches pale green eggs in a dented sand, where the she-whale swims with her cough and never forsakes it, where the steamship trails hind-ways its long pinnant of smoke, where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water, where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents, where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below, where the dense-starred flag is born at the head of the regiments, approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island, under Niagara the cataract fallen like a veil over my countenance, upon a doorstep, upon the horse-block of hardwood outside, upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, where a good game of baseball, at he-festivals with black-guard jibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter, at the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw, at apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find, at musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings, where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gargles, cackles, screams, weeps, where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, where the dry stalks are scattered, where the brood-cow waits in the huddle, where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the studge to the mare, where the cock is shredding the hen, where the heffers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near, where the hummingbird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, where the laughing-girl scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, where beehives range on a grey bench in the garden half-hid by the high weeds, where band-nicked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, where burial-coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery, where winter-wolves bark amidst the wastes of snow and icicle trees, where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs, where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, where the Katie did works her chromatic reed on the walnut tree over the well, through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves, through the salt-blick or orange-glade or under conical furs, through the gymnasium, through the curtain saloon, through the office or public hall, pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign, pleased with the new and old, pleased with the homely woman as well as the handsome, pleased with the quakerous as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, pleased with the tune of the choir of the white-washed church, pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher impressed seriously at the camp meeting, looking in at the shop windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick-plate glass, wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds down a lane or along the beach, my right and left arms round the sides of two friends and I in the middle, coming home with a silent and dark-cheeked bush-boy, behind me he rides at a drape of the day, far from the settlements studying the print of animals feet or the moccasin print, by the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade feverish patient, night a coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle, voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any, hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him, solitary at midnight in my backyard, my thoughts gone for me a long while, walking the old hills of Judea with a beautiful gentle god by my side, speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, speeding amid the seven satellites and a broad ring and the diameter of 80,000 miles, speeding with tailed meteors throwing fireballs like to rest, carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly, storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads, I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product and look at quintillions ripened and look at quintillion screen, I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, my course runs below the soundings of plummets, I help myself to material and immaterial, no guard can shut me off, no law prevent me, I anchor my ship for a little while only, my messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me, I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue, I ascend to the four-truck, I take my place late at night in the crow's nest, we sail the Arctic sea, it is plenty light enough, through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty, the enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions, the white-topped mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them, we are approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to be engaged, we pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city, the blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe, I am a free companion, I bewak by invading watchfires, I turn the bridegroom out of my bed and stay with the bride myself, I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips, my voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs, they fetch the man's body up dripping and drowned, I understand the large hearts of heroes, the courage of present times and old times, how the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship and death chasing it up and down the storm, how he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of days and faithful of nights and chalked in large letters on a board, be of good cheer, we will not desert you, how he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up, how he saved the drifting company at last, how the lank loose-gound women looked and bowed it from the side of their prepared graves, how the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick and the sharp-lipped unshaved men, all this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, I am the man, I suffered, I was there, the disdain and calmness of martyrs, the mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, her children gazing on, the hounded slave that flags in a race, leans by the fence, blowing, covered with sweat, the twinges that sting like needles, his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets, all these I feel or am, I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, the riders spur their unwilling horses, whole-close, taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks, agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, my hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe, I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken, tumbling walls buried me in their debris, heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, they have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth, I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy, white and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, the kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches, distant and dead resuscitate, they show as a dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself, I am an old artillerist, I tell of my forts bombardment, I am there again, again the long roll of the drummers, again the attacking cannon mortars, again to my listening ears the cannon responsive, I take part, I see and hear the whole, the cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aimed shots, the ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip, workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, the fall of grenades through the rent-roof, the fan-shaped explosion, the whiz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air, again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand, he gasps through the clot, mind not me, mind the entrenchments. 34. Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth, I tell not the fall of Alamo, not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, the hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo, it is the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men, retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their baggage for breast-works, nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times their number was the price they took in advance, their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone, they treated for an honourable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their arms and marched back prisoners of war. They were the glory of the race of Rangers, matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud and affectionate, bearded, sunburnt, dressed in free costume of hunters, not a single one over thirty years of age. The second first day morning they were brought out in squats and massacred, it was beautiful early summer, the work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight. None obeyed the command to kneel, some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight, a few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together, the maimed and mangled dug in the dirt, the newcomers saw them there, some half-killed attempted to crawl away, these were dispatched with bayonets or battered with the blunts of muskets, a youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more came to release him, the three were all torn and covered with the boy's blood. At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies, that is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men. Thirty-five. Would you hear of an old-time sea fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn as my grandmother's father, the sailor, told it to me. Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you, said he. His was the surly English pluck and there is no tougher or truer and never was and never will be. Along the lowered eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touched, my captain lashed fast with his own hands. We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water, on our lower gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sundown, fighting at dark, ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leeks on the gain and five feet of water reported. The master-at-arms losing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the sentinels. They see so many strange faces, they do not know whom to trust. Our frigate takes fire, the other asks if we demand quarter, if our collars are struck and the fighting done. Now I laugh content, I hear the voice of my little captain. We have not struck, he composedly cries. We have just begun our part of the fighting. Only three guns are in use. One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main mast. Two well-served with grape and canister, silence his musketry and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main top. They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment's cease, the leeks gained fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward to the power magazine. One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. Serene stands the little captain. He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low. His eyes give more light to us than our battle lanterns. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon, they surrender to us. Thirty-six. Stretched and still lies the midnight. Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness. Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquered. The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet. Nearby the corpse of the child that served in the cabin. The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers. The flames, spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below. The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty. Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars. Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the sooth of waves. Black and impassive guns, litter of powder parcels, strong scent, a few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining. Delicate sniffs of the sea breeze, smells of sedgey grass and fields by the shore, desk messages given in charge to survivors. The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his soul, weeds, cluck, swash of falling blood, short, wild scream and long, dull, tapering groan. These so, these irretrievable. Thirty-seven. You laggards there on guard. Look to your arms. In and to conquered doors they crowd. I am possessed. Embody all presences outlawed or suffering. See myself in prison shaped like another man and feel the dull, unintermitted pain. For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch. It is I let out in the morning and barred at night. Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to jail, but I am handcuffed to him and walk by his side. I am less the jolly one there and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips. Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too and am tried and sentenced. Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp. My face is ash-coloured, my sinews neural, away from me people retreat. Oscars embodied themselves in me and I am embodied in them. I project my hat, sit shame-faced and beg. Thirty-eight. Enough, enough, enough! Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back. Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, dreams, gaping. I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. That I could forget the mockers and insults. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers. That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. I remember now. I resume the overstayed fraction. The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves. Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me. I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession. Inland and sea coast we go and pass all boundary lines, our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth, the blossoms we wear in our hats, the growth of thousands of years. Eleves, I salute you. Come forward. Continue your annotations. Continue your questionings. 39. The friendly and flowing savage. Who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? Is he some southwesterner raised outdoors? Is he Canadian? Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? The mountains, prairie life, bush life, or sailor from the sea? Wherever he goes, men and women accept and desire him. They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. Behavior lawless as snowflakes, words simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter and naivety. Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations. They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers. They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath. They fly out of the glance of his eyes. 40. Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask. Lie over. Your light surfaces only. I force surfaces and depths also. Earth, you seem to look for something at my hands. Say, old topknot, what do you want? Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot, and might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, and might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give myself. You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops till I blow grit within you. Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets. I am not to be denied. I compel. I have stores plenty and despair, and anything I have, I bestow. I do not ask who you are. That is not important to me. You can do nothing and be nothing, but what I will enfold you. To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies, I lean. On his right cheek I put the family kiss, and in my soul I swear I never will deny him. On women fit for conception, I start bigger and nimbler babes. This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics. To anyone dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door, turn the bed clothes toward the foot of the bed, let the physician and the priest go home. I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will. O despairer, here is my neck. By God, you shall not go down. Hang your whole weight upon me. I dilate you with tremendous breath. I buoy you up. Every room of the house I fill with an armed force. Lovers of me, bafflers of graves. Sleep. I and day keep guard all night. Not doubt, not decease, shall dare to lay finger upon you. I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself. And when you rise in the morning, you will find what I tell you is so. End of Book Three, Part Two. Recording by phone. Book Three, Part Three. Of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by phone. 41. I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs and for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help. I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it of several thousand years. It is middling well as far as it goes, but is that all? Magnifying and applying come I, outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah. Lysographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, buying draughts of Osiris, Isis, Bielus, Brahma, Buddha. In my portfolio placing Menetal Luce, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, with Odin and the hideous faced mixitly, and every idol and image, taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, admitting they were alive and did the work of their days. They bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves. Accepting the rough day of sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see, discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, putting higher claims for him there with his rolled up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation. Lads a hold of fire engines and hook and ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, minding their voices peel through the crash of destruction, their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames, by the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple proceeding for every person born. Three sights at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagged out at her waist, the snag-tooth hoster with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, selling all he possesses, travelling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery. What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me and not filling the square rod then? The bull and the bug never worshipped half enough, dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed, the supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the Supremes, the day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best and be as prodigious by my life-lumps becoming already a creator, putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows. Forty-two a coal in the midst of the crowd, my own voice orten sweeping and final. Come, my children, come, my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates. Now, the performer launches his nerve, he has passed his prelude on the reeds within. Easily written loose-fingered chords, I feel the thrum of your climates and clothes. My head slues round on my neck, music rolls but not from the organ. Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. Ever the heart unsunk ground, ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides, ever myself and my neighbours refreshing, wicked, real, ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn-thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts, ever the vexers hoot, hoot, till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth, ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death, here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, to feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, tickets buying, taking, selling, but into the feast never once going, many sweating, plowing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, a few idly owning and they the wheat continually claiming. This is the city and I am one of the citizens. Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, the mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate, and personal estate. The little plentiful mannequins skipping around in colours and tailed coats, I am aware who they are, they are positively not worms or fleas. I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me. What I do and say the same waits for them. Every thought that flounders in me, the same flounders in them, I know perfectly well my own egotism, know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less and would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. Not words of routine this song of mine, but abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer brain, this printed and bound book that the printer and the printing office boy, the well-taken photographs that your wife or friend close and solid in your arms, the black ship mailed with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets, but the pluck of the captains and engineers and the houses, the dishes and fare and furniture, but the host and hostess and the look out of their eyes, the sky up there yet here or next door or across the way, the saints and sages in history, but you yourself, sermons, crades, theology, but the fathomless human brain and what is the reason and what is love and what is life. 43. I do not despise you priests all time, the world over. My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths in closing worship, ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, believing I shall come again upon the earth after 5,000 years, waiting responses from oracles, honouring the gods, saluting the sun, making a fetish of the first rock or stone, palwelling with sticks in the circle of obis, helping the lama or Brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, wrapped and austere in the woods at Gymnosevest, drinking mead from the skullcap just as and Vedas admirant, minding the Quran, walking the teokalus, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum, accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine, to the mass kneeling or the Puritan's prayer rising or sitting patiently in a pew, ranting and frosting in my insane crisis or waiting deadlock till my spirit arouses me, looking forth on pavement and land or outside of pavement and land, belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like man, leaving charges before a journey, down-hearted doubters dull and excluded, frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, this-heartened, atheistical. I know every one of you, I know to see if torment, doubt, despair, and unbelief. How do flutes splash, how they contort rapid as lightning with spasms and spouts of blood, be at peace bloody flutes of doubters and sullen mopers. I take my place among you, as much as among any. The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same, and what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same. I do not know what is untried and afterward, but I know it will in its turn prove sufficient and cannot fail. Each who passes is considered, each who stops is considered, not single one can it fail. It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, nor the little child that peeped in at the door and then drew back and was never seen again, nor the old man who has lived without purpose and feels it with bitterness worse than gold, nor him in the poor house tubercold by rum and the bad disorder, nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked, nor the brutish kaboom nor the sacks merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in, nor anything in the earth or down in the oldest graves of the earth, nor anything in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. 44. It is time to explain myself. That is stand up. What is known, I strip away. I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown. The clock indicates the moment. But what does eternity indicate? We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers. There are trillions ahead and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, and other birds will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater and one smaller that which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you. I am not murderous or jealous upon me. All has been gentle with me. I keep no account with lamentation. What have I to do with lamentation? I am an acme of things accomplished and I an enclosure of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stars. On every step bunches of ages and larger bunches between the steps. All below duly travelled and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me. A far down I see the huge first nothing. I know I was even there. I waited unseen and always and slept through the lethargic mist and took my time and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugged close, long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. Cycles varied my cradle, growing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, for room to me stars kept aside in their own rings. They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me. My embryo has never been torpent. Nothing could overlay it. For it, the nebula, cohered to an orb, the long slow strata piled to rest on it. Fast vegetables gave it sustenance. Monstrous soroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me. Now, on this spot, I stand with my robust soul. Forty-five. Oh span of youth, ever pushed elasticity. Oh manhood, balanced, florid and full. My lovers suffocate me, crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, crying by day, ahoy, from the rocks of the river, swinging and jerping over my head, calling my name from flower beds, vines, tangled underbrush, lighting on every moment of my life, bussing my body with soft balsamic buses, noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine. Old age, superbly rising. Oh, welcome in effable grace of dying days. Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself. And the dark hush promulges as much as any. I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, and all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, outward and outward and forever outward. My son has his son and round him obediently wheels. He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, and greater sets follow, making specs of the greatest inside them. There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage. If I, you, and the worlds and all beneath are upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallet float, it would not avail the long run. We should surely bring up again where we now stand, and surely go as much farther and then farther and farther. A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues do not hazard the span or make it impatient. They are but parts. Anything is but a part. See, ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that. Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. My rendezvous is appointed. It is certain the Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms. The great camarado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be there. Forty-six. I know I have the best of time and space and was never measured and never will be measured. I tramp a perpetual journey. Come listen all. My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods. No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair. I have no chair, no church, no philosophy. I lead no man to a dinner table, library, exchange. But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll. My left hand hooking you round the waist, my right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself. It is not far, it is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine and let us hasten forth wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. If you tire, give me both burdens and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip. And in due time you shall repay the same service to me. For after we start we never lie by again. This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven. And I said to my spirit, when we become the infolders of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then? And my spirit said, no, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. You are also asking me questions and I hear you. I answer that I cannot answer. You must find out for yourself. Sit awhile, dear son. Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink. But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a goodbye kiss and open the gate for your egress hence. Long have you dreamed contemptible dreams. Now I wash the gum from your eyes. You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore. Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, to jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout and laughingly dash with your hair. 47. I am the teacher of athletes. He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own. He most honours my style, who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The boy I love, the same, becomes a man, not through derived power, but in his own right, wicked rather than virtuous, out of conformity or fear, fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, unrequited love, or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, first rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bullseye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo, preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers, all those well-tanned to those that keep out of the sun. I teach, straying from me, yet who can stray from me? I follow you, whoever you are, from the present hour. My words itch at your ears till you understand them. I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat. It is you talking just as much as myself. I act as the tongue of you, tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened. I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house, and I swear I will never translate myself at all only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore. The nearest nut is an explanation and to drop or motion of waves key, the mole, the oar, the hand-soul, second my words. No shuttered room or school can commune with me, but roughs and little children better than they. The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, the woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day. The farm boy, plowing in the field, feels good at the sound of my voice. In vessels that sail, my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and love them. The soldier camped or upon the march is mine. On the night air-depending battle many seek me and I do not fail them. On that solemn night it may be their last, those that know me seek me. My face rubs through the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon. The young mother and old mother comprehend me. The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are. They and all would resume what I have told them. 48 I have said that a soul is not more than the body and I have said that the body is not more than the soul. And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one self is. And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral dressed in his shroud. And I or you, pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth and to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times and there is no trade or employment but a young man following it may become a hero and there is no object so soft that it makes a hump for the wheeled universe. And I say to any man or woman let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind be not curious about God for I who am curious about each am not curious about God. No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death. I hear and behold God in every object yet understand God not in the least nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four and each moment then. In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the glass I find letters from God dropped in the street and every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are for I know that where so where I go others will punctually come forever and ever forty-nine. And as to you death and you bitter hug of mortality it is idle to try to alarm me. To his work without flinching the akushur comes I see the elder hand pressing, receiving, supporting I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors and mark the outlet and mark the relief and escape. And as to you corpse I think you are good manure but that does not offend me. I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing I reach to the leafy lips I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life I reckon you are the livings of many deaths no doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven O suns O grass of graves O perpetual transfers and promotions if you do not say anything how can I say anything of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest of the moon that sends the steeps of the sowing twilight toss sparkles of day and dusk toss on the black stems that decay in the muck toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs I ascend from the moon I ascend from the night I perceive that a ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected and debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small fifty there is that in me I do not know what it is but I know it is in me wrenched and sweaty calm and cool then my body becomes I sleep I sleep long I do not know it it is without name it is a word unsaid it is not in any dictionary utterance symbol something it swings on more than the earth I swing on to it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me perhaps I might tell more outlines I plead for my brothers and sisters do you see brothers and sisters it is not chaos or death it is form union plan it is eternal life it is happiness fifty one the past and present wilt I have filled them emptied them and proceed to fill my next fold of the future listener up there what have you to confide to me look in my face while I snuff the saddle of evening talk honestly no one else hears you and I stay only a minute longer do I contradict myself very well then I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes I concentrate toward them that are nigh wait on the doorslam who has done his day's work who will soonest be through with his supper who wishes to walk with me will you speak before I am gone will you prove already too late fifty two the spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me he complains of my gab and my loitering I too am not a bit tamed I too am untranslatable I sound my barbaric yelp over the roofs of the world the last scud of day holds back for me it flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds it coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk I depart as air I shake my white locks at the runaway sun I effuse my flesh in eddies and drifted in lazy jags I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot soles you will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you and filter and fibre your blood failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged missing me one place search another I stop somewhere waiting for you end of book 3 part 3 recording by phone