Now a black demon, belching fire and steam,

Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream,

And all thy desecrated hulk

Must landlocked lie, a helpless bulk,
To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe 's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air
To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare,
Shot-shattered to have met thy doom
Where thy last lightnings cheered the
gloom,

Than here be safe in dangerless despair. 30

Thy drooping symbol to the flagstaff clings,

Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings,

That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good;

1 This poem is the last, so far as is known, written by Mr. Lowell. He laid it aside for revision, leaving two of the verses incomplete. In a pencilled fragment of the poem the first verse appears as follows:

Strong, simple, silent, such are Nature's Laws. In the final copy, from which the poem is now printed, the verse originally stood:

laws. Strong, steadfast, silent are the but steadfast' is crossed out, and 'simple' written above.

A similar change is made in the ninth verse of the stanza, where simpleness' is substituted for 'steadfastness.' The change from steadfast' to 'simple was not made, probably through oversight, in the first verse of the second stanza. There is nothing to indicate what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen to complete the first verse of the third stanza. (Note by Professor C. E. Norton, in Last Poems of James Russell Lowell.)

THERE WAS A CHILD WENT

FORTH

THERE was day, And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,

a child went forth every

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him, Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms

and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,

1 In the first edition, 1855, without title. In the second edition, 1856, called Poem of The Child That Went Forth and Always Goes Forth Forever and Forever.'

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,

The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by, The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the

sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how, Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets if they are not flashes and specks what are they?

30

The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries, The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between, Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off,

The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-tow'd astern,

The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,

The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in, The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.11

SONG OF MYSELF 2

I

1855.

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good
belongs to you.

1 In the early editions, the following line was added at the end of the poem:

And these become part of him or her that peruses them now. 2 In 1855, without title. In 1856, as the 'Poem of Walt Whitman, an American.' In the third edition, 1860, with the title, Walt Whitman,' and so in the following editions until 1881, when the present title was first used.

The sections were first numbered in 1867.

It must be noted from the beginning that Whitman celebrates himself not as an isolated individual, but as the type of all individual selves, claiming for them all absolute equality. Compare the poem beginning: One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. One of Whitman's early fragments (Notes and Fragments, p. 36, no. 112) reads:

I celebrate myself to celebrate you;

I say the same word for every man and woman living. Compare also Whitman's Preface to the 1876 edition of Leaves of Grass: Then I meant "Leaves of Grass," as published, to be the Poem of average Identity (of yours, whoever you are, now reading these lines). All serves, helps-but in the centre of all, absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the only meaning and vitality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, stands Yourself. To sing the Song of that law of average Identity, and of Yourself, consistently with the divine law of the universal, is a main intention of these "Leaves."

In his myself' he means to picture the typical democratic self. It was both by temperament, and also with a definite purpose in view, that he chose to speak in the first person. One of his early fragmentary notes reads: Ego-style. First-person-style. Style of composition an animated ego-style-"I do not think" "I perceive" or something involving self-esteem, decision, authority- as opposed to the current third person style, essayism, didactic, removed from animation, stating general truths in a didactic, well-smoothed (Notes and Fragments, p. 179.)

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I it is a uniform hieroglyphic, guess And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the