Poems By Walt Whitman Part 19

Give me exhaustless--make me a fountain, That I exhale love from me wherever I go, For the sake of all dead soldiers.

_SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE._

Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!

Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets-- Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, yet onward ever unfaltering pressing!

Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit!

That with muttering voice, through the years now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted, Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum; --Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates round me; As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles; While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders; While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders; While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the distance, approach and pa.s.s on, returning homeward, Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left, Evenly, lightly, rising and falling, as the steps keep time: --Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day; Touch my mouth, ere you depart--press my lips close!

Leave me your pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with currents convulsive!

Let them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone; Let them identify you to the future in these songs!

_RECONCILIATION._

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!

Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash again, and ever again, this soiled world.

For my enemy is dead--a man divine as myself is dead.

I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin--I draw near; I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

_AFTER THE WAR._

To the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last; Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead: But forth from my tent emerging for good--loosing, untying the tent-ropes; In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas, again to peace restored; To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond--to the south and the north; To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs, To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace, To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide, To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air.

And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely; The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son:-- The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end; But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs.

WALT WHITMAN

_a.s.sIMILATIONS._

1.

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 tretching cycles of years.

2.

The early lilacs became part of this child, And gra.s.s, and white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2]

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 barn-yard, 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 fiat heads--all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part or him;

3.

Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and 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 pa.s.sed on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that pa.s.sed, 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; The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour 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-- Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?

The streets themselves, and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows, Vehicles, teams, the heavy-planked wharves--the huge crossing at the ferries, The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset--the river between; Shadows, aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three 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 coloured 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 sh.o.r.e mud;-- These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

[Footnote 1: The name of "morning-glory" is given to the bindweed, or a sort of bindweed, in America. I am not certain whether this expressive name is used in England also.]

[Footnote 2: A dun-coloured little bird with a cheerful note, sounding like the word Phoebe.]

_A WORD OUT OF THE SEA._

1.

Out of the rocked cradle, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the showered halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting; as if they were alive, Out from the patches of briars and blackberries, From the memories of the birds that chanted to me, From your memories, sad brother--from the fitful risings and fallings I heard, From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears, From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist, From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease, From the myriad thence-aroused words, From the word stronger and more delicious than any,-- From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting, As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead pa.s.sing, Borne hither--ere all eludes me, hurriedly,-- A man--yet by these tears a little boy again, Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter, Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, A reminiscence sing.

2.

Once, Paumanok, When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month gra.s.s was growing, Up this sea-sh.o.r.e, in some briars, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown; And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes; And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

3.

_s.h.i.+ne! s.h.i.+ne! s.h.i.+ne!

Pour down your warmth, great Sun!

While we bask--we two together.

Two together!

Winds blow South, or winds blow North, Day come white or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, If we two but keep together_.

4.

Till of a sudden, Maybe killed, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appeared again.

And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the sea, And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather, Over the hoa.r.s.e surging of the sea, Or flitting from briar to briar by day, I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, The solitary guest from Alabama.

5.