Poems By Walt Whitman Part 37

_LOVE OF COMRADES._

1.

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!

I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades.

2.

I will plant companions.h.i.+p thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the sh.o.r.es of the great lakes, and all over the prairies; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks; By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades.

3.

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, _ma femme_!

For you! for you, I am trilling these songs, In the love of comrades, In the high-towering love of comrades.

_PULSE OF MY LIFE._

Not heaving from my ribbed breast only; Not in sighs at night, in rage, dissatisfied with myself; Not in those long-drawn, ill-suppressed sighs; Not in many an oath and promise broken; Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition; Not in the subtle nourishment of the air; Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists; Not in the curious systole and diastole within, which will one day cease; Not in many a hungry wish, told to the skies only; Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone, far in the wilds; Not in husky pantings through clenched teeth; Not in sounded and resounded words--chattering words, echoes, dead words; Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep, Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day; Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you and dismiss you continually--Not there; Not in any or all of them, O Adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!

Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these songs.

_AUXILIARIES._

WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?

Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal; And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, And artillerymen, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

_REALITIES._

1.

As I walk, solitary, unattended, Around me I hear that _eclat_ of the world--politics, produce, The announcements of recognised things--science, The approved growth of cities, and the spread of inventions.

I see the s.h.i.+ps, (they will last a few years,) The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen, And hear the endors.e.m.e.nt of all, and do not object to it.

2.

But I too announce solid things; Science, s.h.i.+ps, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing--they serve, They stand for realities--all is as it should be.

3.

Then my realities; What else is so real as mine?

Libertad, and the divine Average-Freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and _lumine_[1] of seers--the spiritual world--these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

For we support all, After the rest is done and gone, we remain, There is no final reliance but upon us; Democracy rests finally upon us, (I, my brethren, begin it,) And our visions sweep through eternity.

[Footnote 1: I suppose Whitman gets this odd word _lumine_, by a process of his own, out of _illuminati_, and intends it to stand for what would be called clairvoyance, intuition.]

_NEARING DEPARTURE._

1.

As nearing departure, As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud, A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.

2.

I shall _go_ forth, I shall traverse the States--but I cannot tell whither or how long; Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease.

3.

O book and chant! must all then amount to but this?

Must we barely arrive at this beginning of me?...

And yet it is enough, O soul!

O soul! we have positively appeared--that is enough.

_POETS TO COME._

1.

Poets to come!

Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and what we are for; But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, You must justify me.

2.

I but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.