The Complete Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

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      I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,

       Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

      Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,

       musical, self-sufficient,

       I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,

       Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,

       Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an

       island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,

       Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,

       light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,

       Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,

       The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining

       islands, the heights, the villas,

       The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the

       ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,

       The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses

       of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,

       Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,

       The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the

       brown-faced sailors,

       The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,

       The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,

       passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,

       The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,

       beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,

       Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,

       A million people — manners free and superb — open voices — hospitality —

       the most courageous and friendly young men,

       City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!

       City nested in bays! my city!

All Is Truth

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      O me, man of slack faith so long,

       Standing aloof, denying portions so long,

       Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,

       Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,

       but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,

       Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.

      (This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be

       realized,

       I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,

       And that the universe does.)

      Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?

       Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?

       or in the meat and blood?

      Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see

       that there are really no liars or lies after all,

       And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called

       lies are perfect returns,

       And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,

       And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as

       space is compact,

       And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth — but

       that all is truth without exception;

       And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,

       And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

A Riddle Song

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      That which eludes this verse and any verse,

       Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind,

       Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,

       And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,

       Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,

       Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,

       Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,

       Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,

       Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted,

       Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d,

       Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

      Indifferently, ‘mid public, private haunts, in solitude,

       Behind the mountain and the wood,

       Companion of the city’s busiest streets, through the assemblage,

       It and its radiations constantly glide.

      In looks of fair unconscious babes,

       Or strangely in the coffin’d dead,

       Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,

       As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,

       Hiding yet lingering.

      Two little breaths of words comprising it,

       Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.

      How ardently for it!

       How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it!

      How many travelers started from their homes and neer return’d!

       How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!

       What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it!

       How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it — and

       shall be to the end!

       How all heroic martyrdoms to it!

       How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!

       How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and

       land, have drawn men’s eyes,

       Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs,

       Or midnight’s silent glowing northern lights unreachable.

      Haply God’s riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,

       The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,

       And heaven at last for it.

Excelsior

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