Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (44 page)

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments—full of grain and trees.

 

O for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of
fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

 

0 the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

 

O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

 

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh
stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.

 

O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool
gurgling by the ears and hair.

 

O the fireman’s joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.

 

O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

 

O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.

 

O the mother’s joys!
The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the
patiently yielded life.

 

O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation,
The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and
harmony.

 

O to go back to the place where I was born,
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once
more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.

 

O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the
coast,
To continue and be employ’d there all my life,
The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at
low water,
The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam
fisher;
I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear,
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome
young man;
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot
on the ice—I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon,
my brood of tough boys accompanying me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no
one else so well as they love to be with me,
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.

 

Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots
where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys,)
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I
row just before sunrise toward the buoys,
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert wooden
pegs in the joints of their pincers,
I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the
shore,
There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil’d
till their color becomes scarlet.

 

Another time mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill
the water for miles;
Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
brown-faced crew;
Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with
braced body,
My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the
coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
companions.

O boating on the rivers,
The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the
steamers,
The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-
raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they
cook supper at evening.

 

(O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)

 

O to work in mines, or forging iron,
Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample
and shadow’d space,
The furnace, the hot liquid pour’d out and running.

 

O to resume the joys of the soldier!
To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer—to feel his
sympathy!
To behold his calmness—to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle—to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery—to see the glittering of the bayonets
and musket-barrels in the sun!
To see men fall and die and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood—to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.

 

O the whaleman’s joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
I feel the ship’s motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes
fanning me,
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast head,
There—she blows!
Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest—we descend,
wild with excitement,
I leap in the lower’d boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass,
lethargic, basking,
I see the harpooner standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
vigorous arm;
O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling,
running to windward, tows me,
Again I see him rise to breathe, we row close again,
I see a lance driven through his side, press’d deep, turn’d in the
wound,
Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower
and narrower, swiftly cutting the water—I see him die,
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then
falls flat and still in the bloody foam.

 

O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.

 

O ripen’d joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable
mother,
How clear is my mind—how all people draw nigh to me!
What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more
than the bloom of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?

 

O the orator’s joys!
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.

 

O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself, receiving identity
through materials and loving them, observing characters and
absorbing them,
My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing,
touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and
flesh,
My body done with materials, my sight done with my material
eyes,
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes
which finally see,
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
embraces, procreates.

 

O the farmer’s joys!
Ohioan‘s, Illinoisian’s, Wisconsinese‘, Kanadian’s, Iowan‘s,
Kansian’s, Missourian‘s, Oregonese’ joys!
To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.

 

O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the
shore.

 

O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying
clouds, as one with them.

 

O the joy of a manly self-hood!
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or
unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the
earth.

 

Know‘st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing
face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath’d
games?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the
dancers?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse and drinking?

 

Yet O my soul supreme!
Know‘st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow’d yet proud, the suffering
and the struggle?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day
or night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals, the divine wife, the
sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.

 

O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving
my interior soul impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

 

For not life’s joys alone I sing, repeating—the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few
moments, for reasons,
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn‘d, or
render’d to powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the
purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.

 

O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys
none of the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with
perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

 

O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and
the houses,
To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!

 

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

Weapon shapely, naked, wan,
³⁷
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 sown,
Resting 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.

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.

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, saddlebags;
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 cury’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 wielding the 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 workmanlike 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-color’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
^at
edifice,
The Roman lictors
^au
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.