The Complete Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarl . . . . away from me people retreat.

      Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them,

       I project my hat and sit shamefaced and beg.

      I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation,

       The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.

      Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!

       Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping,

       I discover myself on a verge of the 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 . . . . I resume the overstaid fraction,

       The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it . . . . or to any graves,

       The corpses rise . . . . the gashes heal . . . . the fastenings roll away.

      I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,

       We walk the roads of Ohio and Massachusetts and Virginia and Wisconsin and New York and New Orleans and Texas and Montreal and San Francisco and Charleston and Savannah and Mexico,

       Inland and by the seacoast and boundary lines . . . . and we pass the boundary lines.

      Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole earth,

       The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years.

      Eleves I salute you,

       I see the approach of your numberless gangs . . . . I see you understand yourselves and me,

       And know that they who have eyes are divine, and the blind and lame are equally divine,

       And that my steps drag behind yours yet go before them,

       And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.

      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? or from Iowa, Oregon or California? or from the mountains? or prairie life or bush-life? or from the sea?

      Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,

       They desire he should like them and touch them and speak to them and stay with them.

      Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes . . . . words simple as grass . . . . uncombed head and laughter and naivete;

       Slowstepping feet and the common features, and the 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.

      Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask . . . . lie over,

       You light surfaces only . . . . I force the surfaces and the 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 the pinings I have . . . . the pulse of my nights and days.

      Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,

       What I give I give out of 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 to spare,

       And any thing 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 infold you.

      To a drudge of the cottonfields or emptier 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 any one dying . . . . thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,

       Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed,

       Let the physician and the priest go home.

      I seize the descending man . . . . I 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 do I fill with an armed force . . . . lovers of me, bafflers of graves:

       Sleep! I and they 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.

      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 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,

       The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal wet,

       Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away,

       Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

      Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai,

       In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the crucifix engraved,

       With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,

       Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,

       Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,

       Admitting they bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,

       Accepting the rough deific 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 as curious as any revelation;

       Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes more to me than the gods of the antique wars,

       Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

       Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths . . . . their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;