The Complete Poetry of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

      Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,

       Only what nobody denies is so.

      A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;

       I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,

       And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,

       And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,

      And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,

       And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

      I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

       And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

       And the tree-toad is a chef-d’ouvre for the highest,

       And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

       And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

       And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

       And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,

       And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

      I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and esculent roots,

       And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,

       And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,

       And call any thing close again when I desire it.

      In vain the speeding or shyness,

       In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,

       In vain the mastadon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,

       In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,

       In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,

       In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,

       In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,

       In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,

       In vain the razorbilled auk sails far north to Labrador,

      I follow quickly . . . . I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

      I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals . . . . they are so placid and self-contained,

       I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

      They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

       They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

       They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

       Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

       Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

       Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

      So they show their relations to me and I accept them;

       They bring me tokens of myself . . . . they evince them plainly in their possession.

      I do not know where they got those tokens,

       I must have passed that way untold times ago and negligently dropt them,

       Myself moving forward then and now and forever,

       Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,

       Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them;

       Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,

       Picking out here one that shall be my amie,

       Choosing to go with him on brotherly terms.

      A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,

       Head high in the forehead and wide between the ears,

       Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

       Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness . . . . ears finely cut and flexibly moving.

      His nostrils dilate . . . . my heels embrace him . . . . his well built limbs tremble with pleasure . . . . we speed around and return.

      I but use you a moment and then I resign you stallion . . . . and do not need your paces, and outgallop them,

       And myself as I stand or sit pass faster than you.

      Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at;

       What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,

       What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed . . . . and again as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

      My ties and ballasts leave me . . . . I travel . . . . I sail . . . . my elbows rest in the sea-gaps,

       I skirt the sierras . . . . my palms cover continents,

       I am afoot with my vision.

      By the city’s quadrangular houses . . . . in log-huts, or camping with lumbermen,

       Along the ruts of the turnpike . . . . along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,

       Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips . . . . crossing savannas . . . trailing in forests,

       Prospecting . . . . gold-digging . . . . girdling the trees of a new purchase,

       Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand . . . . hauling my boat down the shallow river;

       Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead . . . . where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,

       Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock . . . . where the otter is feeding on fish,

       Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

       Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey . . . . where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-tail;

       Over the growing sugar . . . . over the cottonplant . . . . over the rice in its low moist field;

       Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters;

       Over the western persimmon . . . . over the longleaved corn and the delicate blueflowered flax;

      Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer there with the rest,

       Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;

       Scaling mountains . . . . pulling myself cautiously up . . . . holding on by low scragged limbs,

       Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush;

       Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,

       Where the bat flies in the July eve . . . . where the great goldbug drops through the dark;

       Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,

       Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,

       Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides,

       Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle the hearth-slab, and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;

       Where triphammers crash . . . . where the press is whirling its cylinders;

       Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs;

       Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft . . . . floating in it myself and looking composedly down;