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 ;)

100

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.)

you:

You shall not heap up what is call'd riches, You shall scatter with lavish hard all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an irresistible call to depart,

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands toward you.

Habitués of many distant countries, habi

tués 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

Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and trimm'd faces, Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to

hear the confession,

Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,

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Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors, In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere, Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,

Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,

Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,

Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

WHY, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.2

1 In the 1856 edition, with the title' Poem of Perfect Miracles. In its first form the poem began with a paragraph since omitted:

Realism is mine, my miracles,

Take all of the rest-take freely I keep but my own - I give only of them,

I offer them without end - I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you, or your eyes reach.

2 Compare the original Preface to Leaves of Grass, the first edition, 1855: every motion and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place.'

See also the longer passage at the end of the fifth paragraph of this Preface, on the miracle of eyesight.

I NEED no assurances, I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own soul; 2

I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of, calm and actual faces, I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world, 3

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, in vain I try to think how limitless,

I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,

4

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight,

1 In the 1856 edition, with the title Faith Poem; ' in 1860 as No. vii, Leaves of Grass.

2 In the 1856 edition there followed the line (omitted in 1867):

I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given time, there waits for me more which I do not know.

3 In the 1856 edition there followed the line (omitted in 1867):

I do not doubt there are realizations I have no idea of, waiting for me through time and through the universes - also upon this earth.

4 Here followed, in the 1856 edition, the lines (omitted in 1867):

I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed;

I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have supposed -and more in all men and women and more in my poems than I have supposed.

and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for,

(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,"

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any time, is provided for in the inherences of things, I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all."

1856.

CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY'

I

FLOOD-TIDE below me! I see you face to face!

Clouds of the west -sun there half an hour high- I see you also face to face.

5 Here followed, in 1856, the lines (omitted in 1871): I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malignance, are provided for:

I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the remainder of the earth, politics, freedom, degradations, are carefully provided for.

6 The last line of the poem, and the fourth line from the end, in parenthesis, appeared first in the edition of 1871, where the poem was included among the Whispers of Heavenly Death.

7 Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, later ('50 to '60), I cross'd on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements! Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day -the hurrying, splashing sea-tides - the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports-the myriads of white sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvellously beautiful yachts- the majestic Sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound-the prospect off towards Staten Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson - what refreshment of spirit such sights