1 Read by Whitman at the Commencement of Dartmouth College, in 1872. The poem originally began with what is now Section 2, and the title as well as the first line was As a strong bird on pinions free.' What is now Section 1 was added in the 1881 edition. See the original Preface of this poem, in the Complete Prose Works, pp. 268-272. One of its chief ideas is condensed in two paragraphs near the end :— - I say 'The Four Years' War is over-and in the peaceful, strong, exciting, fresh occasions of to-day, and of the future, that strange, sad war is hurrying even now to be forgotten. The camp, the drill, the lines of sentries, the prisons, the hospitals (ah! the hospitals !) — ali have passed away all seem now like a dream. A new race, a young and lusty generation, already sweeps in with oceanic currents, obliterating the war, and all its scars, its mounded graves, and all its reminiscences of hatred, conflict, death. So let it be obliterated. the life of the present and the future makes undeniable demands upon us each and all, south, north, east, west. To help put the United States (even if only in imagination) hand in hand, in one unbroken circle in a chant -to rouse them to the unprecedented grandeur of the part they are to play, and are even now playing-to the thought of their great future, and the attitude conform'd to it- especially their great esthetic, moral, scientific future (of which their vulgar material and political present is but as the preparatory tuning of instruments by an orchestra), these, as hitherto, are still, for me, among my hopes, ambitions. Leaves of Grass," already publish'd, is, in its intentions, the song of a great composite democratie individual, male or female. And following on and amplifying the same purpose, I suppose I have in my mind to run through the chants of this volume (if ever completed), the thread-voice, more or less audible, of an aggregated, inseparable, unprecedented, vast, composite, electric democratic nationality.' Compare also Whitman's Democratic Vistas, Complete Prose Works, pp. 197-250; "A Backward Glance 20 Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library; But an odor I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois prairie, With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or Florida's glades, Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron, With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite, And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound, That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world. o'er Travel'd Roads;" and, especially, one of Whitman's early notes, in Notes and Fragments, p. 59: — 'In Poems-bring in the idea of Mother-the idea of the mother with numerous children - all, great and small, old and young, equal in her eyes- as the identity of America.' 40 And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain, Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long, Thou carefully prepared by it so longhaply thou but unfoldest it, only maturest it, It to eventuate in thee- the essence of the by-gone time contain'd in thee, Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with reference to thee; Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing, The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee. With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee, With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents, Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant; Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou carriest great companions, Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee, And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 5 Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes, Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky, Emblem of general maternity lifted above all, 60 Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons, Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life, World of the real world of the twain in one, World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led to identity, body, by it alone, Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite precious materials, By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent, Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be constructed here (The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, literatures to come), Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I define thee, 70 How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past, I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe, But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to comprehend thee, I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, Thee in thy future, Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit, Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all, Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great hilarity, 81 Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that weigh'd so long upon the mind of man, The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence of man; Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male-thee in thy athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East, (To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every daughter, son, endear'd alike, forever equal,) Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but certain, Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy proudest material civilization must remain in vain,) Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship thee in no single bible, saviour, merely, Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any. (Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great wars, nor in thy century's visible growth, 90 But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great Mother!) 1 Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, students, born of thee, Thee in thy democratic fêtes en-masse, thy high original festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, Thee in thy ultimata (the preparations only now completed, the edifice on sure foundations tied), Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost rational joys, thy love and godlike aspiration, In thy resplendent coming literati, thy fulllung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, These! these in thee (certain to come), today I prophesy. 6 Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all good for thee, 1 The two lines in parenthesis were added in 1881. Not for success alone, Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse than war shall cover thee all over, (Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace, not war ;) In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge thy face with hectic,1 But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount them all, Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be, They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee, While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, Equable, natural, mystical Union thou (the mortal with immortal blent), Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the body and the mind, The soul, its destinies. 120 The soul, its destinies, the real real, (Purport of all these apparitions of the real ;) In thee America, the soul, its destinies, 1 Compare Democratic Vistas, pp. 203-208; and Two Rivulets, 1876, the prose section Thou knowest my years entire, my life, My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely; It was near the close of his indomitable and pious life on his last voyage when nearly 70 years of age that Columbus, to save his two remaining ships from foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, had to run them ashore on the Island of Jamaicawhere, laid up for a long and miserable year 1503he was taken very sick, had several relapses, his men revolted, and death seem'd daily imminent; though he was eventually rescued, and sent home to Spain to die, unrecognized, neglected and in want. . . . It is only ask'd, as preparation and atmosphere for the following lines, that the bare authentic facts be recall'd and realized, and nothing contributed by the fancy. See, the Antillean Island, with its florid skies and rich foliage and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and the hulls of the ships in the distance. See, the figure of the great Admiral, walking the beach, as a stage, in this sublimest tragedy- - for what tragedy, what poem, so piteous and majestic as the real scene? - and hear him uttering-as his mystical and religious soul surely utter'd, the ideas following-perhaps, in their equiv alents, the very words. (WHITMAN.) The end I know not, it is all in Thee, Or small or great I know not haply what broad fields, what lands, Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know, Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee, Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools, Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there. One effort more, my altar this bleak sand; That Thou O God my life hast lighted, 41 With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, Thee, Thee at least I know. Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving? What do I know of life? what of myself? I know not even my own work past or present, Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me, Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, Mocking, perplexing me. 60 And these things I see suddenly, what mean they? As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes, Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, And on the distant waves sail countless ships, And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me. 1874. (1876.) COME, SAID MY SOUL1 COME, SAID MY SOUL, SUCH VERSES FOR MY BODY LET US WRITE, (FOR WE ARE ONE), THAT SHOULD I AFTER DEATH INVISIBLY RETURN, OR, LONG, LONG HENCE, IN OTHER SPHERES, 1 The Inscription, signed with Whitman's autograph, to the 1876 edition of Leaves of Grass, and to all the following editions authorized by him. |