140. Not Youth Pertains to Me



NOT youth pertains to me,       
Nor delicatesse—I cannot beguile the time with talk;       
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant;       
In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still—for learning. inures not to me;       
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three things inure to me;            5   
I have nourish’d the wounded, and sooth’d many a dying soldier,       
And at intervals, waiting, or in the midst of camp,       
Composed these songs.

141. To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod



TO the leaven’d 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;            5   
To the leaven’d 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,     10   
To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the same 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;     15   
But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs.

142. Delicate Cluster



DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life!       
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!       
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing!       
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)       
Flag cerulean! sunny flag! with the orbs of night dappled!            5   
Ah my silvery beauty! ah my woolly white and crimson!       
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!       
My sacred one, my mother.

143. Sing of the Banner at Day-Break



POET.

O A NEW song, a free song,       
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,       
By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,       
By the banner’s voice, and child’s voice, and sea’s voice, and father’s voice,       
Low on the ground and high in the air,            5   
On the ground where father and child stand,       
In the upward air where their eyes turn,       
Where the banner at day-break is flapping.       
     
Words! book-words! what are you?       
Words no more, for hearken and see,     10   
My song is there in the open air—and I must sing,       
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.       
     
I’ll weave the chord and twine in,       
Man’s desire and babe’s desire—I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life;       
I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point—I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz;     15   
(As one carrying a symbol and menace, far into the future,       
Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)       
I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy;       
Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,       
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.     20   
     
PENNANT.

Come up here, bard, bard;       
Come up here, soul, soul;       
Come up here, dear little child,       
To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.       
     
CHILD.

Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?     25   
And what does it say to me all the while?       
     
FATHER.

Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky;       
And nothing at all to you it says. But look you, my babe,       
Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening;       
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods:     30   
These! ah, these! how valued and toil’d for, these!       
How envied by all the earth!       
     
POET.

Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high;       
On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels;       
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;     35   
The great steady wind from west and west-by-south,       
Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters.       
     
But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;       
I am not the wind, with girlish laughter;       
Not the immense wind which strengthens—not the wind which lashes;     40   
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death;       
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,       
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,       
Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings,       
And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,     45   
Aloft there flapping and flapping.       
     
CHILD.

O father, it is alive—it is full of people—it has children!       
O now it seems to me it is talking to its children!       
I hear it—it talks to me—O it is wonderful!       
O it stretches—it spreads and runs so fast! O my father,     50   
It is so broad, it covers the whole sky!       
     
FATHER.

Cease, cease, my foolish babe,       
What you are saying is sorrowful to me—much it displeases me;       
Behold with the rest, again I say—behold not banners and pennants aloft;       
But the well-prepared pavements behold—and mark the solid-wall’d houses.     55   
     
BANNER AND PENNANT.

Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan;       
(The war is over—yet never over.... out of it, we are born to real life and identity;)       
Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,       
Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground,       
Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-plows are plowing;     60   
Speak, O bard! point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know not why;       
For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting nothing,       
Only flapping in the wind?       
     
POET.

I hear and see not strips of cloth alone;       
I hear again the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry;     65   
I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men—I hear LIBERTY!       
I hear the drums beat, and the trumpets yet blowing;       
I myself move abroad, swift-rising, flying then;       
I use the wings of the land-bird, and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height;       
I do not deny the precious results of peace—I see populous cities, with wealth incalculable;     70   
I see numberless farms—I see the farmers working in their fields or barns;       
I see mechanics working—I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish’d;       
I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the locomotives;       
I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans;       
I see far in the west the immense area of grain—I dwell awhile, hovering;     75   
I pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern plantation, and again to California;       
Sweeping the whole, I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earned wages;       
See the identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States (and many more to come;)       
See forts on the shores of harbors—see ships sailing in and out;       
Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant, shaped like a sword,     80   
Runs swiftly up, indicating war and defiance—And now the halyards have rais’d it,       
Side of my banner broad and blue—side of my starry banner,       
Discarding peace over all the sea and land.       
     
BANNER AND PENNANT.

Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!       
No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone;     85   
We may be terror and carnage, and are so now;       
Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten;)       
Nor market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the city;       
But these, and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours;       
And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers, great and small;     90   
And the fields they moisten are ours, and the crops and the fruits are ours;       
Bays and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours—and we over all,       
Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles—the capitals,       
The forty millions of people—O bard! in life and death supreme,       
We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,     95   
Not for the present alone, for a thousand years, chanting through you,       
This song to the soul of one poor little child.       
     
CHILD.

O my father, I like not the houses;       
They will never to me be anything—nor do I like money;       
But to mount up there I would like, O father dear—that banner I like;    100   
That pennant I would be, and must be.       
     
FATHER.

Child of mine, you fill me with anguish;       
To be that pennant would be too fearful;       
Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever;       
It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything;    105   
Forward to stand in front of wars—and O, such wars!—what have you to do with them?       
With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?       
     
POET.

Demons and death then I sing;       
Put in all, aye all, will I—sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so broad and blue,       
And a pleasure new and extatic, and the prattled yearning of children,    110   
Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land, and the liquid wash of the sea;       
And the black ships, fighting on the sea, enveloped in smoke;       
And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines;       
And the whirr of drums, and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south;       
And the beech-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my western shore the same;    115   
And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi, with bends and chutes;       
And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri;       
The CONTINENT—devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom,       
Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of all.       
     
BANNER AND PENNANT.

Aye all! for ever, for all!    120   
From sea to sea, north and south, east and west,       
(The war is completed, the price is paid, the title is settled beyond recall;)       
Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole;       
No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,       
But, out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,    125   
Croaking like crows here in the wind.       
     
POET.
(Finale.)

My limbs, my veins dilate;       
The blood of the world has fill’d me full—my theme is clear at last:       
—Banner so broad, advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute;       
I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded;    130   
My sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a little child taught me;)       
I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call and demand;       
Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner!       
Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them;       
You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money;    135   
May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, except you, above them and all, stand fast;)       
—O banner! not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment,       
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships;       
Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes,       
Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,—But you, as henceforth I see you,    140   
Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars;)       
Divider of day-break you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun, measuring the sky,       
(Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,       
While others remain busy, or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;)       
O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so curious,    145   
Out of reach—an idea only—yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death—loved by me!       
So loved! O you banner leading the day, with stars brought from the night!       
Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute owner of ALL)—O banner and pennant!       
I too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing—houses, machines are nothing—I see them not;       
I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only,    150   
Flapping up there in the wind.

144. Ethiopia Saluting the Colors



1

WHO are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human,       
With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?       
Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?       
     
2

(’Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sand and pines,       
Forth from thy hovel door, thou, Ethiopia, com’st to me,            5   
As, under doughty Sherman, I march toward the sea.)       
     
3

Me, master, years a hundred, since from my parents sunder’d,       
A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught;       
Then hither me, across the sea, the cruel slaver brought.       
     
4

No further does she say, but lingering all the day,     10   
Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,       
And curtseys to the regiments, the guidons moving by.       
     
5

What is it, fateful woman—so blear, hardly human?       
Why wag your head, with turban bound—yellow, red and green?       
Are the things so strange and marvelous, you see or have seen?     15

145. Lo! Victress on the Peaks



LO! Victress on the peaks!       
Where thou, with mighty brow, regarding the world,       
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee;)       
Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all;       
Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,            5   
Flauntest now unharm’d, in immortal soundness and bloom—lo! in these hours supreme,       
No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee—nor mastery’s rapturous verse;       
But a book, containing night’s darkness, and blood-dripping wounds,       
And psalms of the dead.

146. World, Take Good Notice



WORLD, take good notice, silver stars fading,       
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching,       
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,       
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,       
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.            5

147. Thick-Sprinkled Bunting



THICK-SPRINKLED bunting! Flag of stars!       
Long yet your road, fateful flag!—long yet your road, and lined with bloody death!       
For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world!       
All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy banner!       
—Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest born, to flaunt unrival’d?            5   
O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings,       
Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol—run up above them all,       
Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!

148. Faces



1

SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces!       
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;       
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face,       
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top;       
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens;            5   
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face;       
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face;       
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children;       
The face of an amour, the face of veneration;       
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;     10   
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;       
A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper;       
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.       
     
Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and faces:       
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.     15   
     
2

Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their own finale?       
     
This now is too lamentable a face for a man;       
Some abject louse, asking leave to be—cringing for it;       
Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.       
     
This face is a dog’s snout, sniffing for garbage;     20   
Snakes nest in that mouth—I hear the sibilant threat.       
     
This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea;       
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.       
     
This is a face of bitter herbs—this an emetic—they need no label;       
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.     25   
     
This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,       
Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites,       
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails,       
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.       
     
This face is bitten by vermin and worms,     30   
And this is some murderer’s knife, with a half-pull’d scabbard.       
     
This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee;       
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.       
     
3

Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of the great round globe!       
     
Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas’d and cadaverous march?     35   
Well, you cannot trick me.       
     
I see your rounded, never-erased flow;       
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.       
     
Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats;       
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.     40   
     
I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum;       
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;       
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,       
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;       
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,     45   
And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm’d, every inch as good as myself.       
     
4

The Lord advances, and yet advances;       
Always the shadow in front—always the reach’d hand bringing up the laggards.       
     
Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming;       
I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way,     50   
I hear victorious drums.       
     
This face is a life-boat;       
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest;       
This face is flavor’d fruit, ready for eating;       
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.     55   
     
These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake;       
They show their descent from the Master himself.       
     
Off the word I have spoken, I except not one—red, white, black, are all deific;       
In each house is the ovum—it comes forth after a thousand years.       
     
Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me;     60   
Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me;       
I read the promise, and patiently wait.       
     
This is a full-grown lily’s face,       
She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden pickets,       
Come here, she blushingly cries—Come nigh to me, limber-hipp’d man,     65   
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,       
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,       
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.       
     
5

The old face of the mother of many children!       
Whist! I am fully content.     70   
     
Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,       
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,       
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier under them.       
     
I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,       
I heard what the singers were singing so long,     75   
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue,       
     
Behold a woman!       
She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky.       
     
She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,       
The sun just shines on her old white head.     80   
     
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,       
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.       
     
The melodious character of the earth,       
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go,       
The justified mother of men.

149. Manhattan Streets I Saunter’d, Pondering



1

MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering,       
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.       
     
2

After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence;       
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.       
     
The Soul is of itself;            5   
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues;       
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence;       
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct life-time, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect life-time.       
     
3

The indirect is just as much as the direct,       
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.     10   
     
Not one word or deed—not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of the onanist, putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning, betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution, but has results beyond death, as really as before death.       
     
4

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.       
     
No specification is necessary—all that a male or female does, that is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope of it forever.       
     
5

Who has been wise, receives interest,       
Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat, young, old, it is the same,     15   
The interest will come round—all will come round.       
     
Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect all of the past, and all of the present, and all of the future,       
All the brave actions of war and peace,       
All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful, young children, widows, the sick, and to shunn’d persons,       
All furtherance of fugitives, and of the escape of slaves,     20   
All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others fill the seats of the boats,       
All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend’s sake, or opinion’s sake,       
All pains of enthusiasts, scoff’d at by their neighbors,       
All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,       
All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded,     25   
All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,       
All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name, date, location,       
All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,       
All suggestions of the divine mind of man, or the divinity of his mouth, or the shaping of his great hands;       
All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe—or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix’d stars, by those there as we are here;     30   
All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any one;       
These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which they sprang, or shall spring.       
     
6

Did you guess anything lived only its moment?       
The world does not so exist—no parts palpable or impalpable so exist;       
No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation—and that from some other,     35   
Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.       
     
7

Whatever satisfies Souls is true;       
Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of Souls;       
Itself only finally satisfies the Soul;       
The Soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own.     40   
     
8

Now I give you an inkling;       
Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, space, reality,       
That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.       
     
What is prudence, is indivisible,       
Declines to separate one part of life from every part,     45   
Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous, or the living from the dead,       
Matches every thought or act by its correlative,       
Knows no possible forgiveness, or deputed atonement,       
Knows that the young man who composedly peril’d his life and lost it, has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,       
That he who never peril’d his life, but retains it to old age in riches and ease, has probably achiev’d nothing for himself worth mentioning;     50   
Knows that only that person has really learn’d, who has learn’d to prefer results,       
Who favors Body and Soul the same,       
Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,       
Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries or, avoids death.