Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (86 page)

 

Darkly and sadly his spirit has fled,
But his name will long linger in story;
He needs not a stone to hallow his bed;
He’s in Heaven, encircled with glory.

O, Death! a black and pierceless pall
Hangs round thee, and the future state;
No eye may see, no mind may grasp
That mystery of Fate.

 

This brain, which now alternate throbs
With swelling hope and gloomy fear;
This heart, with all the changing hues,
That mortal passions bear—

 

This curious frame of human mould,
Where unrequited cravings play,
This brain, and heart, and wondrous form
Must all alike decay.

 

The leaping blood will stop its flow;
The hoarse death-struggle pass; the cheek
Lay bloomless, and the liquid tongue
Will then forget to speak.

 

The grave will tame me; earth will close
O‘er cold dull limbs and ashy face;
But where, O, Nature, where shall be
The soul’s abiding place?

 

Will it e‘en live? for though its light
Must
shine till from the body torn;
Then, when the oil of life is spent,
Still shall the taper burn?

 

O, powerless is this struggling brain
To rend the mighty mystery;
In dark, uncertain awe it waits
The common doom, to die.

“The trail of the serpent is at times seen in every man’s path.”

 

Upon the ocean’s wave-worn shore
I marked a solitary form,
Whose brooding look, and features wore
The darkness of the coming storm!
And, from his lips, the sigh that broke,
So long within his bosom nursed,
In deep and mournful accents spoke,
Like troubled waves, that shining burst!

 

And as he gazed on earth and sea,
Girt with the gathering night; his soul,
Wearied and life-worn, longed to flee,
And rest within its final goal!
He thought of her whose love had beamed,
The sunlight of his ripened years;
But now her gentle memory seemed
To brim his eye with bitter tears!

 

“Oh! thou bless’d Spirit!” thus he sighed—
“Smile on me from thy realm of rest!
My dark and doubting spirit guide,
By conflict torn, and grief oppressed!
Teach me, in every saddening care,
To see the chastening hand of Heaven;
The Soul’s high culture to prepare,
Wisely and mercifully given!

 

“Could I this sacred solace share,
‘Twould still my struggling bosom’s moan;
And the deep peacefulness of prayer,
Might for thy heavy loss atone!
Earth, in its wreath of summer flowers,
And all its varied scenes of joy,
Its festal halls and echoing bowers,
No more my darkened thoughts employ.

 

“But here, the billow’s heaving breast,
And the low thunder’s knelling tone,
Speak of the wearied soul’s unrest,
Its murmuring, and conflicts lone!
And yon sweet star, whose golden gleam,
Pierces the tempest’s gathering gloom,
In the rich radiance of its beam,
Tells me of light beyond the tomb!”

Not in a gorgeous hall of pride
Where tears fall thick, and loved ones sigh,
Wished he, when the dark hour approached
To drop his veil of flesh, and die.

 

Amid the thundercrash of strife,
Where hovers War’s ensanguined cloud,
And bright swords flash and banners fly
Above the wounds, and groans, and blood.

 

Not there—not there! Death’s look he’d cast
Around a furious tiger’s den.
Rather than in the monstrous sight
Of the red butcheries of men.

 

 

Days speed: the time for that last look
Upon this glorious earth has come:
The Power he served so well vouchsafes
The sun to shine, the flowers to bloom.

 

Just ere the closing of the day,
His fainting limbs he needs will have
Borne out into the fresh free air,
Where sweet shrubs grow, and proud trees wave.

 

At distance, o‘er the pleasant fields,
A bay by misty vapors curled,
He gazes on, and thinks the haven
For which to leave a grosser world.

 

He sorrows not, but smiles content,
Dying there in that fragrant place,
Gazing on blossom, field, and bay,
As on their Maker’s very face.

 

The cloud-arch bending overhead,
There, at the setting of the sun
He bids adieu to earth, and steps
Down to the World Unknown.

When painfully athwart my brain
Dark thoughts come crowding on,
And, sick of worldly hollowness,
My heart feels sad or lone—

 

Then out upon the green I walk,
Just ere the close of day,
And swift I ween the sight I view
Clears all my gloom away.

 

For there I see young children—
The cheeriest things on earth—
I see them play—I hear their tones
Of loud and reckless mirth.

 

 

And many a clear and flute-like laugh
Comes ringing through the air;
And many a roguish, flashing eye,
And rich red cheek, are there.

 

O, lovely, happy children!
I am with you in my soul;
I shout—I strike the ball with you—
With you I race and roll.—

 

Methinks white-winged angels,
Floating unseen the while,
Hover around this village green,
And pleasantly they smile.

 

O, angels! guard these children!
Keep grief and guilt away:
From earthly harm—from evil thoughts
O, shield them night and day!

To be sung on Fort Greene; 4th of July, 1846. Tune “The Star Spangled Banner.”

O, God of Columbia! O, Shield of the Free!
More grateful to you than the fanes of old story,
Must the blood-bedewed soil, the red battle-ground, be
Where our fore-fathers championed America’s glory!

 

Then how priceless the worth of the sanctified earth,
We are standing on now. Lo! the slopes of its girth
Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones,
Mark their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones!

Say! sons of Long-Island! in legend or song,
Keep ye aught of its record, that day dark and cheerless—
That cruel of days—when, hope weak, the foe strong,
Was seen the Serene One—still faithful, still fearless,
Defending the worth, of the sanctified earth
We are standing on now, &c.

Ah, yes! be the answer. In memory still
We have placed in our hearts, and embalmed there forever!
The battle, the prison-ship, martyrs and hill,
—O, may it be preserved till those hearts death shall sever!
For how priceless the worth, etc.

And shall not the years, as they sweep o‘er and o’er,
Shall they not, even
here,
bring the children of ages—
To exult as their fathers exulted before,
In the freedom achieved by our ancestral sages?
And the prayer rise to heaven, with pure gratitude given
And the sky by the thunder of cannon be riven?
Yea! yea! let the echo responsively roll
The echo that starts from the patriot’s soul!

How solemn! sweeping this dense black tide!
No friendly lights i’ the heaven o‘er us;
A murky darkness on either side,
And kindred darkness all before us!

 

 

Now, drawn near the shelving rim,
Weird-like shadows suddenly rise;
Shapes of mist and phantoms dim
Baffle the gazer’s straining eyes.

 

River fiends, with malignant faces!
Wild and wide their arms are thrown,
As if to clutch in fatal embraces
Him who sails their realms upon.

 

Then, by the trick of our own swift motion,
Straight, tall giants, an army vast,
Rank by rank, like the waves of ocean,
On the shore march stilly past.

 

How solemn! the river a trailing pall,
Which takes, but never again gives back;
And moonless and starless the heavens’ arch’d wall,
Responding an equal black!

 

Oh, tireless waters! like Life’s quick dream,
Onward and onward ever hurrying—
Like Death in this midnight hour you seem,
Life in your chill drops greedily burying!

We are all docile dough-faces,
They knead us with the fist,
They, the dashing southern lords,
We labor as they list;
For them we speak—or hold our tongues,
For them we turn and twist.

 

 

We join them in their howl against
Free soil and “abolition,”
That firebrand—that assassin knife—
Which risk our land’s condition,
And leave no peace of life to any
Dough-faced politician.

 

To put down “agitation,” now,
We think the most judicious;
To damn all “northern fanatics,”
Those “traitors” black and vicious;
The “reg‘lar party usages”
For us, and no “new issues.”

 

Things have come to a pretty pass,
When a trifle small as this,
Moving and bartering nigger slaves,
Can open an abyss,
With jaws a-gape for “the two great parties;”
A pretty thought, I wis!

 

Principle—freedom!—fiddlesticks!
We know not where they’re found.
Rights of the masses—progress!—bah!
Words that tickle and sound;
But claiming to rule o‘er “practical men”
Is very different ground.

 

Beyond all such we know a term
Charming to ears and eyes,
With it we’ll stab young Freedom,
And do it in disguise;
Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces
That term is “compromise.”

 

And what if children, growing up,
In future seasons read
The thing we do? and heart and tongue
Accurse us for the deed?
The future cannot touch us;
The present gain we heed.

 

Then, all together, dough-faces!
Let’s stop the exciting clatter,
And pacify slave-breeding wrath
By yielding all the matter;
For otherwise, as sure as guns,
The Union it will shatter.

 

 

Besides, to tell the honest truth
(For us an innovation,)
Keeping in with the slave power
Is our personal salvation;
We’ve very little to expect
From t’ other part of the nation.

 

Besides it’s plain at Washington
Who likeliest wins the race,
What earthly chance has “free soil”
For any good fat place?
While many a daw has feather’d his nest,
By his creamy and meek dough-face.

 

Take heart, then, sweet companions,
Be steady, Scripture Dick!
Webster, Cooper, Walker,
To your allegiance stick!
With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix,
Stand up through thin and thick!
We do not ask a bold brave front;
We never try that game;
‘Twould bring the storm upon our heads,
A huge mad storm of shame;
Evade it, brothers—“compromise”
Will answer just the same. PAUMANOK

Of olden time, when it came to pass
That the beautiful god, Jesus, should finish his work on earth,
Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,
And took pay for his body.

 

Curs’d was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand
grew dry;
And darkness frown’d upon the seller of the like of God,
Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,
and heaven refused him,
He hung in the air, self-slaughter’d.

 

The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk’d silently
forward,
Since those ancient days—many a pouch enwrapping
meanwhile
Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.
And still goes one, saying,
“What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?”
And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

Look forth, deliverer,
Look forth, first-born of the dead,
Over the tree-tops of Paradise;
See thyself in yet-continued bonds,
Toilsome and poor, thou bear‘st man’s form again,
Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,
Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;
With staves and swords throng the willing servants of
authority,
Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;
Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures’
talons,
The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their
palms;
Bruised, bloody, and pinion’d is thy body,
More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

 

Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,
Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:
And still Iscariot plies his trade.
April,
1843 PAUMANOK

If thou art balked, O Freedom,
The victory is not to thy manlier foes;
From the house of thy friends comes the death stab.

 

Vaunters of the Free,
Why do you strain your lungs off southward?
Why be going to Alabama?
Sweep first before your own door;
Stop this squalling and this scorn
Over the mote there in the distance;
Look well to your own eye, Massachusetts—
Yours, New-York and Pennsylvania;
—I would say yours too, Michigan,
But all the salve, all the surgery
Of the great wide world were powerless there.

 

Virginia, mother of greatness,
Blush not for being also mother of slaves.
You might have borne deeper slaves—
Doughfaces, Crawlers, Lice of Humanity—
Terrific screamers of Freedom,
Who roar and bawl, and get hot i’ the face,
But, were they not incapable of august crime,
Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink—
Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground,
A dollar dearer to them than Christ’s blessing;
All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain;
In life walking in that as in a shroud:
Men whom the throes of heroes,
Great deeds at which the gods might stand appalled
The shriek of a drowned world, the appeal of women,
The exulting laugh of untied empires,
Would touch them never in the heart,
But only in the pocket.