You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,

I believe that much unseen is also here.*

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,

The black with his woolly head, the felon,

the diseas'd, the illiterate person, are not denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics, 20

2 A great recreation, the past three years, has been in taking long walks out from Washington, five, seven, perhaps ten miles and back; generally with my friend Peter Doyle, who is as fond of it as I am. Fine moonlight nights, over the perfect military roads, hard and smooth or Sundays-we had these delightful walks, never to be forgotten. (WHITMAN, Specimen Days, December 10th, 1865. Complete Prose Works, p. 70.) This poem first appeared in 1856, with the title Poem of the Road.'

3 This line was added in the edition of 1881.

4 In the first form of the poem, 1856, this line read: I believe that something unseen is also here.

The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?

Do you say Venture not — if you leave me you are lost?

Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,

You express me better than I can express myself,

You shall be more to me than my poem.

Here is the efflux of the soul,

The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd gates, ever provoking questions,

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?

Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Why are there trees I never walk under

but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass ;)

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What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?

What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?

What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause? What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

8

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,

I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,

Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character, The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,

majesty, love, if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them. (1856.)

Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!

2

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They too are on the road- they are the swift and majestic men - they are the greatest women, Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,

2 Here began in the 1856 edition a new paragraph: Over that which hindered them, over that which retarded, passing impediments large or small,

Committers of crimes, committers of many beautiful virtues, Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,...

The first two lines were omitted from 1881 on.

Habitués of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,

Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,

Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,

Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,

Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins, Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it, Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases, Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,

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Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and wellgrain❜d manhood,

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content,

Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13

Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,

To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,

To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

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To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it, To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,

To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,

To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,

To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married

couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,

To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,

To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,

To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,

To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you, To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls. 1

All parts away for the progress of souls, 181 All religion, all solid things, arts, governments all that was or is apparent upon this globe, or any globe falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,

Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,

They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,

But I know that they go toward the besttoward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

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Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!

It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest, Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,

1 In the early editions, down to 1881, there follows here another brief paragraph:

The soul travels,

The body does not travel as much as the soul, The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.