The Complete Poetry of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,

       The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

      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 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 understand enough . . . . why don’t you let it out then?

      Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.

      Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?

       Waiting in gloom protected by frost,

       The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,

       I underlying causes to balance them at last,

       My knowledge my live parts . . . . it keeping tally with the meaning of 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 the best I am.

      Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,

       I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.

      Writing and talk do not prove me,

       I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,

       With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.

      I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,

       And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me.

      I hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames . . . . clack of sticks cooking my meals.

      I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love,

       I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses . . . .

      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 recitative of fish-pedlars and fruit-pedlars . . . . the loud laugh of workpeople at their meals,

       The angry base of disjointed friendship . . . . the faint tones of the sick,

       The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence,

       The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves . . . . the refrain of the anchor-lifters;

       The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,

       The steam-whistle . . . . the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;

       The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,

       They go to guard some corpse . . . . the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.

      I hear the violincello or man’s heart’s complaint,

       And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset.

      I hear the chorus . . . . it is a grand-opera . . . . this indeed is music!

      A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,

       The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

      I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip;

       The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,

       It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,

       It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,

       It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by the indolent waves,

       I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail,

       Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,

      Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,

       And that we call Being.

      To be in any form, what is that?

       If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and 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 am happy,

       To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.

      Is this then a touch? . . . . quivering me to a new identity,

       Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,

       Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,

       My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly different from myself,

       On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,

       Straining the udder 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 and holding me by the bare waist,

       Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields,

       Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,

       They bribed 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 sentries 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.

      Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!

       Did it make you ache so leaving me?

      Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the 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.

      All truths wait in all things,

       They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,

       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,