Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab. Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me? Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late? 52 The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.1 The last scud of day holds back for me, I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. 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. In the first form of the poem, 1856, this line read' I believe that something unseen is also here. The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping couple, The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town, They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted, None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me. 3 You air that serves me with breath to speak! You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers ! 1 You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me. You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 30 You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves ! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships! You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd façades! you roofs ! You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! You doors and ascending steps! you arches ! You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings! From all that has touch'd you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me, From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would de the same to you, I will recruit for myself and you as I go, In the edition of 1856 this section began:- From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits, etc. 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 hand 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, 160 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. 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 |