The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman
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Lo, body and soul—this land,My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,The gentle soft-born measureless light,The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.O liquid and free and tender!O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!You only I hear—yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),Yet the lilac with mastering odour holds me.14
Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms),Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labour,And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three,And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.From deep secluded recesses,From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,Came the carol of the bird.And the charm of the carol rapt me,As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.Come lovely and soothing death,Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,In the day, in the night, to all, to each,Sooner or later delicate death.Prais'd be the fathomless universe,For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.Approach strong deliveress,When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.From me to thee glad serenades,Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.The night in silence under many a star,The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.15
To the tally of my soul,Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.Loud in the pines and cedars dim,Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,And I with my comrades there in the night.While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,As to long panoramas of visions.And I saw askant the armies,I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,But I saw they were not as was thought,They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.16
Passing the visions, passing the night,Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with spring.I cease from my song for thee,From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,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,Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;But O heart! heart! heart!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 ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;Here Captain! dear father!This 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,My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;Exult O shores, and ring O bells!But I with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4, 1865)
Hush'd be the camps to-day,And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,Our dear commander's death.No more for him life's stormy conflicts,Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time's dark events,Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.But sing poet in our name,Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.As they invault the coffin there,Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse,For the heavy hearts of soldiers.ASHES OF SOLDIERS
Ashes of soldiers South or North,As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,And again the advance of the armies.Noiseless as mists and vapours,From their graves in the trenches ascending,From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or single ones they come,And silently gather round me.Now sound no note O trumpeters,Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs (ah my brave horsemen!My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,With all the perils were yours).Nor you drummers, neither at reveillé at dawn,Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for a burial,Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,The slain elate and alive again, the dust and débris alive,I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,Draw close, but speak not.Phantoms of countless lost,Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,Follow me ever—desert me not while I live.Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living—sweet are the musical voices sounding,But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,But love is not over—and what love, O comrades!Perfume from battlefields rising, up from the foetor arising.Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.Perfume all—make all wholesome,Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.PENSIVE ON HER DEAD GAZING
Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing(As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger'd),As she call'd to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk'd,Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my sons, lose not an atom,And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable,And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers' depths,And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children's blood trickling redden'd,And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,My dead absorb or South or North—my young men's bodies absorb, and their precious, precious blood,Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year hence,In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence,In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give my immortal heroes,Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an atom be lost,O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!Exhale them perennial sweet death, years centuries hence.III
POEMS OF AMERICA
I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
Come my tan-faced children,Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?Pioneers! O pioneers!For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of dangerWe the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,Pioneers! O pioneers!O you youths, Western youths,So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,Pioneers! O pioneers!Have the elder races halted?Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,Pioneers! O pioneers!All the past we leave behind,We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march,Pioneers! O pioneers!We detachments steady throwing,Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,Pioneers! O pioneers!We primeval forests felling,We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,Pioneers! O pioneers!Colorado men are we,From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,Pioneers! O pioneers!From Nebraska, from Arkansas,Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd,All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,Pioneers! O pioneers!O resistless restless race!O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,Pioneers! O pioneers!Raise the mighty mother mistress,Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress (bend your heads all),Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,Pioneers! O pioneers!See my children, resolute children,By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,Pioneers! O pioneers!On and on the compact ranks,With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,Pioneers! O pioneers!O to die advancing on!Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd,Pioneers! O pioneers!All the pulses of the world,Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,Pioneers! O pioneers!Life's involv'd and varied pageants,All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,Pioneers! O pioneers!All the hapless silent lovers,All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,Pioneers! O pioneers!I too with my soul and body,We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,Pioneers! O pioneers!Lo, the darting bowling orb!Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering sun and planets,All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,Pioneers! O pioneers!These are of us, they are with us,All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,Pioneers! O pioneers!O you daughters of the West!O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,Pioneers! O pioneers!Minstrels latent on the prairies!(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work)Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,Pioneers! O pioneers!Not for delectations sweet,Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studiousNot the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,Pioneers! O pioneers!Do the feasters gluttonous feast?Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,Pioneers! O pioneers!Has the night descended?Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way?Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,Pioneers! O pioneers!Till with sound of trumpet,Far, far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,Pioneers! O pioneers!SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE
1
Weapon shapely, naked, wan,Head from the mother's bowels drawn,Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sownResting the grass amid and upon,To be lean'd and to lean on.Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds,Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.2
Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,Welcome are lands of pine and oak,Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,Welcome are lands of gold,Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato,Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp;Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,Lands of iron—lands of the make of the axe.3
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd for a garden,The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull'd,The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends, and the cutting away of masts,The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion'd houses and barns,The remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset anywhere,The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm'd faces,The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint,The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification;The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work,The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock-boughs, and the bear-skin;The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular,Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they were prepared,The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curv'd limbs,Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces,The hook'd arm over the plate, the other arm wieldingthe axe,The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail'd,Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,The echoes resounding through the vacant building;The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks,The bricks one after another each laid so workman-like in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men;Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast,The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,The butter-colour'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea;The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-pack'd square,The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the hooks and ladders and their execution,The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors if the fire smoulders under them,The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his thumb,The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither,The siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty,The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley,The sack of an old city in its time.The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands,Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,The power of personality just or unjust.4
Muscle and pluck forever!What invigorates life invigorates death,And the dead advance as much as the living advance,And the future is no more uncertain than the present,For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,And nothing endures but personal qualities.What do you think endures?Do you think a great city endures?Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steamships?Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,The show passes, all does well enough of course,All does very well till one flash of defiance.A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.