Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Book One,
Inscriptions One self I sing.
One self I sing,
A simple separate person.
But utter the word democratic,
The word en masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing.
Not physiognomy alone,
Nor brain alone,
Is worthy for the muse,
I say.
The form complete is worthier far.
The female equally with the male I sing.
Of life immense in passion,
Pulse in power.
Cheerful for forest action formed under the laws divine.
The modern man I sing.
As I pondered in silence.
As I pondered in silence,
Returning upon my poems,
Considering,
Lingering long,
A phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect.
Terrible in beauty,
Age in power.
The genius of poets of old lands.
As to me directing like flame its eyes,
With finger pointing to many immortal songs.
And menacing voice,
What singest thou,
It said.
Knowest thou not there is but one theme for every enduring bards?
And that is the theme of war,
The fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers.
Be it so,
Then I answered,
I too,
Hottie shade,
Also sing war,
And a longer and greater one than any,
Waged in my book with varying fortune,
With flight,
Advance and retreat,
Victory deferred and wavering.
Yet me think certain,
Or as good as certain in the last,
The field,
The war.
For life and death,
For the body and for the eternal soul,
Lo,
I too am come,
Chanting the chant of battles,
I above all promote brave soldiers.
In Cabin Ships at Sea In Cabin Ships at Sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding.
With whistling winds and music of the waves,
The large imperious waves,
Or some lone bark buoyed on the dense marine,
Where joyous,
Full of faith,
Spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether,
Mid the sparkle and foam of the day,
Or under many a star at night.
But sailors young and old,
Happily will I,
A reminiscence of the land,
Be ready,
In full rapport at last.
Here are our thoughts,
Voyagers' thoughts.
Here not the land,
Firm land,
Alone appears.
May then by then be said,
The sky o'er arches here.
We feel the undulating deck beneath our feet.
We feel the long pulsation,
Ebb and flow of endless motion.
The tones of unseen mystery,
The vague and vast suggestions of the briny world,
The liquid flowing syllables,
The perfume,
The faint creaking of the cordage,
The melancholy rhythm.
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
And this is Ocean's Poem.
Then falter not,
O Book,
Fulfill your destiny.
You will not a reminiscence of the land alone.
You too,
As a lone bark cleaving the ether,
Proposed I know not,
Yet over full of faith.
Consort to every ship that sails,
Sail you.
Bear forth to them folded my love.
Dear mariners,
For you I fold it here in every leaf.
Speed on,
My book,
Spread your white sails,
My little bark,
Athwart in imperious waves.
Chant on,
Sail on,
Bear o'er the boundless blue,
From me to every sea.
This song for mariners and all their ships.
To foreign lands,
I heard that you'd asked for something to prove this puzzle the new world and to define America,
Her athletic democracy.
Therefore,
I send you my poems,
That you behold in them what you wanted.
To a historian,
You who celebrate bygones,
You have explored the outward,
The surfaces of the races,
The life that has exhibited itself,
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics,
Aggregates,
Rulers and priests,
I,
Habitant of the Alleghenies,
Treating of him as he in himself,
In his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,
The great pride of man in himself,
Chanter of personality,
Outlining what it is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.
To thee,
Old cause,
To thee,
Old cause,
Thou peerless,
Passionate,
Good cause,
Thou stern,
Remorseless,
Sweet idea,
Deathless throughout the ages,
Races and lands.
After a strange,
Sad war,
Great war for thee,
I think all war,
Through time,
Was really fought and ever will be really fought,
For thee,
These chants for thee,
The eternal march of thee,
A war of soldiers not for itself alone,
Far,
Far more stood silently waiting behind,
Now to advance in this book,
Thou orb of many orbs,
Thou seething principle,
Though well kept,
Latent germ,
Thou centre,
And the idea of thee the war revolving,
With all its angry and vehement play of causes,
With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,
These recitatives for thee,
My book,
And the war are one,
Merged in its spirit,
I and mine,
As the contest hinged on thee,
As a wheel on its axis turns,
This book unwitting to itself,
Around the idea of thee.
And that is the end of our reading this evening,
Until next time,
Sweet dreams.
