The Complete Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

by after all.

      I exist as I am, that is enough,

       If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

       And if each and all be aware I sit content.

      One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,

       And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,

       I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

      My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,

       I laugh at what you call dissolution,

       And I know the amplitude of time.

      I am the poet of the body,

       And I am the poet of the soul.

      The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,

       The first I graft and increase upon myself . . . . the latter I translate into a new tongue.

      I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

       And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,

       And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

      I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,

       We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,

       I show that size is only developement.

      Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?

       It is a trifle . . . . they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

      I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;

       I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

      Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!

       Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!

       Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night!

      Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!

       Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

       Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!

       Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!

       Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!

       Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!

       Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!

       Smile, for your lover comes!

      Prodigal! you have given me love! . . . . therefore I to you give love!

       O unspeakable passionate love!

      Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!

       We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

      You sea! I resign myself to you also . . . . I guess what you mean,

       I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,

       I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;

      We must have a turn together . . . . I undress . . . . hurry me out of sight of the land,

       Cushion me soft . . . . rock me in billowy drowse,

       Dash me with amorous wet . . . . I can repay you.

      Sea of stretched ground-swells!

       Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!

       Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!

       Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!

       I am integral with you . . . . I too am of one phase and of all phases.

      Partaker of influx and efflux . . . . extoler of hate and conciliation,

       Extoler of amies and those that sleep in each others’ arms.

      I am he attesting sympathy;

       Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?

      I am the poet of commonsense and of the demonstrable and of immortality;

       And am not the poet of goodness only . . . . I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

      Washes and razors for foofoos . . . . for me freckles and a bristling beard.

      What blurt is it about virtue and about vice?

       Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me . . . . I stand indifferent,

       My gait is no faultfinder’s or rejecter’s gait,

       I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

      Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?

       Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?

      I step up to say that what we do is right and what we affirm is right . . . . and some is only the ore of right,

      Witnesses of us . . . . one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,

       Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

       Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

      This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

       There is no better than it and now.

      What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder,

       The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

      Endless unfolding of words of ages!

       And mine a word of the modern . . . . a word en masse.

      A word of the faith that never balks,

       One time as good as another time . . . . here or henceforward it is all the same to me.

      A word of reality . . . . materialism first and last imbueing.

      Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!

       Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;

       This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old cartouches,

       These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,

       This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

      Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,

       The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

      I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,

       And go on the square for my own sake and for others’ sakes,

       And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped,

      And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

      Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,

       Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,

       No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest.

      Unscrew the locks from the doors!

       Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

      Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me,

       And whatever I do or say I also return.

      Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.

      I speak the password