Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim. O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 1 O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! The arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. THERE WAS A CHILD WENT FORTH 2 THERE was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became, 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, IO 20 And grass and white and red morning-glories, 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. 1 First published 1865 (L. G., 1871). 10 2 First published 1855 (L. G., 1871). This and the following poem come from a group entitled Autumn Rivuletz, The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him, 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 passed on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the changes of city and country wherever he went. His own parents, he that had fathered him and she that had conceived him in her womb and birthed him, They gave this child more of themselves than that, They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him. The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table, IO 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, angered, 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 gainsaid, 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, Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they? The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows, 20 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-towed astern, The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping, The strata of colored 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. WHO LEARNS MY LESSON COMPLETE? 1 WHO learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer, Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy-draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson-it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still. 1 First published 1855 (L. G., 1867). The great laws take and effuse without argument, I am of the same style, for I am their friend, I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams. I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, I cannot say to any person what I hear-I cannot say it to myself—it is very wonderful. 10 It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second, I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor planned and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house. I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful, 20 And passed from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk-all this is equally wonderful. And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH 1 WHISPERS of heavenly death murmured I hear, Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low, I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing, With at times a half-dimmed saddened far-off star, Appearing and disappearing. (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, Some soul is passing over.) 10 1 First published 1868 (L. G., 1871). From a group which has a general title identical with the title of this poem. PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS, 18551 AMERICA does not repel the past, or what the past has produced under its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old religions-accepts the lesson with calmness-is not impatient because the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature, while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms-perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house-perceives that it waits a little while in the door-that it was fittest for its days-that its action has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches-and that he shall be fittest for his days. The Americans, of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto, the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop 1 This, the Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass, is reprinted from Whitman's Complete Prose Works. When Whitman included the Preface in this volume he revised it, and it has seemed preferable, for the purposes of students, to print the revised version. Of this 1855 Preface Bliss Perry has said: "The book is scarcely to be understood without it, and in the long list of dissertations by poets upon the nature of poetry, it would be difficult to point to one more vigorous and impassioned, although much of it is as inconsecutive as the essays of Emerson which helped to inspire it. Its general theme is the inspiration which the United States offers to the great poet." apples, or the bays contain fish, or men beget children upon women. The Other states indicate themselves in their deputies-but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventorsbut always most in the common people, south, north, west, east, in all its States, through all its mighty amplitude. largeness of the nation, however, were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man-nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the cheapest -namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired in North and South America, were less than the small theater of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle. ages!) The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of full-sized men, or one fullsized man unconquerable and simple. The American poets are to enclose old and new, for America is the race of races. The expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or age obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach he stands, turning a concentrated light-he turns the pivot with his finger-he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul-it pervades the common people and preserves them -they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist. The power to destroy or remold is freely used by the greatest poet, but seldom the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not what is wanted. The presence of the great poet conquers-not parleying, or struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see after him! There is not left any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or cunning, or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or color, or delusion of hell or the necessity of helland no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer-he is individual-he is complete in himself-the others are as good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is not one of the chorus-he does not stop for any regulation-he is the president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest, he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvelous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague-after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit, and given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or jostling or jam? The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small themes-but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objectsthey expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough-probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in out-door people. They can never be assisted by poets to perceive some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshaled in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough -the fact will prevail through the universe; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income |