324. Lessons



THERE are who teach only the sweet lessons of peace and safety;       
But I teach lessons of war and death to those I love,       
That they readily meet invasions, when they come.

325. This Day, O Soul



THIS day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror;       
Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay—But the cloud has pass’d, and the tarnish gone;       
... Behold, O Soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror,       
Faithfully showing you all the things of the world.

326. To the Reader at Parting



NOW, dearest comrade, lift me to your face,       
We must separate awhile—Here! take from my lips this kiss.       
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;       
So long!—And I hope we shall meet again.

327. Two Rivulets



TWO Rivulets side by side,       
Two blended, parallel, strolling tides,       
Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey.       
     
For the Eternal Ocean bound,       
These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life,            5   
Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by,       
The Real and Ideal,       
     
Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights,       
(Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, Past.)       
     
In You, whoe’er you are, my book perusing,     10   
In I myself—in all the World—these ripples flow,       
All, all, toward the mystic Ocean tending.       
     
(O yearnful waves! the kisses of your lips!       
Your breast so broad, with open arms, O firm, expanded shore!)   

328. Or from that Sea of Time



1

OR, from that Sea of Time,       
Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;       
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!       
Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held,       
Murmurs and echoes still bring up—Eternity’s music, faint and far,            5   
Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim—strains for the Soul of the Prairies,       
Whisper’d reverberations—chords for the ear of the West, joyously sounding       
Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable;)       
Infinitessimals out of my life, and many a life,       
(For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give;)     10   
These thoughts and Songs—waifs from the deep—here, cast high and dry,       
Wash’d on America’s shores.       
     
2

Currents of starting a Continent new,       
Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,       
Fusion of ocean and land—tender and pensive waves,     15   
(Not safe and peaceful only—waves rous’d and ominous too.       
Out of the depths, the storm’s abysms—Who knows whence? Death’s waves,       
Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter’d sail.)

329. From My Last Years



FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath,       
Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West,       
Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois—through Colorado, California air,       
For Time to germinate fully.

330. In Former Songs



1

IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life,       
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.       
     
And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death,       
To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all!       
(You that elude me most—refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)            5   
I offer all to you.       
     
2

’Tis not for nothing, Death,       
I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone—embodying you,       
In my new Democratic chants—keeping you for a close,       
For last impregnable retreat—a citadel and tower,     10   
For my last stand—my pealing, final cry.

I. Specimen Days
A Happy Hour’s Command
Answer to an Insisting Friend
Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman
The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
The Maternal Homestead
Two Old Family Interiors
Paumanok, and My Life on It as Child and Young Man
My First Reading—Lafayette
Printing Office—Old Brooklyn
Growth—Health—Work
My Passion for Ferries
Broadway Sights
Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
Plays and Operas Too
Through Eight Years
Sources of Character—Results—1860
Opening of the Secession War
National Uprising and Volunteering
Contemptuous Feeling
Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
Down at the Front
After First Fredericksburg
Back to Washington
Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
Hospital Scenes and Persons
Patent-Office Hospital
The White House by Moonlight
An Army Hospital Ward
A Connecticut Case
Two Brooklyn Boys
A Secesh Brave
The Wounded from Chancellorsville
A Night Battle, over a Week Since
Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
Some Specimen Cases
My Preparations for Visits
Ambulance Processions
Bad Wounds—The Young
The Most Inspiriting of All War’s Shows
Battle of Gettysburg
A Cavalry Camp
A New York Soldier
Home-Made Music
Abraham Lincoln
Heated Term
Soldiers and Talks
Death of a Wisconsin Officer
Hospitals Ensemble
A Silent Night Ramble
Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
Cattle Droves about Washington
Hospital Perplexity
Down at the Front
Paying the Bounties
Rumors, Changes, &c.
Virginia
Summer of 1864
A New Army Organization Fit for America
Death of a Hero
Hospital Scenes—Incidents
A Yankee Soldier
Union Prisoners South
Deserters
A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes
Gifts—Money—Discrimination
Items from My Note Books
A Case from Second Bull Run
Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies
The Blue Everywhere
A Model Hospital
Boys in the Army
Burial of a Lady Nurse
Female Nurses for Soldiers
Southern Escapees
The Capitol by Gas-Light
The Inauguration
Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War
The Weather—Does It Sympathize with These Times?
Inauguration Ball
Scene at the Capitol
A Yankee Antique
Wounds and Diseases
Death of President Lincoln
Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation—Its Sudden Stoppage
No Good Portrait of Lincoln
Releas’d Union Prisoners from South
Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
The Armies Returning
The Grand Review
Western Soldiers
A Soldier on Lincoln
Two Brothers, One South, One North
Some Sad Cases Yet
Calhoun’s Real Monument
Hospitals Closing
Typical Soldiers
“Convulsiveness”
Three Years Summ’d Up
The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
An Interregnum Paragraph
New Themes Entered Upon
Entering a Long Farm-Lane
To the Spring and Brook
An Early Summer Reveille
Birds Migrating at Midnight
Bumble-Bees
Cedar-Apples
Summer Sights and Indolencies
Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—The Hermit-Thrush
A July Afternoon by the Pond
Locusts and Katydids
The Lesson of a Tree
Autumn Side-Bits
The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness
Colors—A Contrast
November 8, ’76
Crows and Crows
A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach
Sea-Shore Fancies
In Memory of Thomas Paine
A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail
Spring Overtures—Recreations
One of the Human Kinks
An Afternoon Scene
The Gates Opening
The Common Earth, the Soil
Birds and Birds and Birds
Full-Starr’d Nights
Mulleins and Mulleins
Distant Sounds
A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
The Oaks and I
A Quintette
The First Frost—Mems
Three Young Men’s Deaths
February Days
A Meadow Lark
Sundown Lights
Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream
Clover and Hay Perfume
An Unknown
Bird-Whistling
Horse-Mint
Three of Us
Death of William Cullen Bryant
Jaunt up the Hudson
Happiness and Raspberries
A Specimen Tramp Family
Manhattan from the Bay
Human and Heroic New York
Hours for the Soul
Straw-Color’d and Other Psyches
A Night Remembrance
Wild Flowers
A Civility Too Long Neglected
Delaware River—Days and Nights
Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
Up the Hudson to Ulster County
Days at J. B.’s—Turf-Fires—Spring Songs
Meeting a Hermit
An Ulster County Waterfall
Walter Dumont and His Medal
Hudson River Sights
Two City Areas, Certain Hours
Central Park Walks and Talks
A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
Departing of the Big Steamers
Two Hours on the Minnesota
Mature Summer Days and Nights
Exposition Building—New City Hall—River Trip
Swallows on the River
Begin a Long Jaunt West
In the Sleeper
Missouri State
Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
The Prairies
On to Denver—A Frontier Incident
An Hour on Kenosha Summit
An Egotistical “Find”
New Senses—New Joys
Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c.
America’s Back-Bone
The Parks
Art Features
Denver Impressions
I Turn South—And Then East Again
Unfulfill’d Wants—The Arkansas River
A Silent Little Follower—The Coreopsis
The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains
America’s Characteristic Landscape
Earth’s Most Important Stream
Prairie Analogies—The Tree Question
Mississippi Valley Literature
An Interviewer’s Item
The Women of the West
The Silent General
President Hayes’s Speeches
St. Louis Memoranda
Nights on the Mississippi
Upon Our Own Land
Edgar Poe’s Significance
Beethoven’s Septette
A Hint of Wild Nature
Loafing in the Woods
A Contralto Voice
Seeing Niagara to Advantage
Jaunting to Canada
Sunday with the Insane
Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
Grand Native Growth
A Zollverein Between the U. S. and Canada
The St. Lawrence Line
The Savage Saguenay
Capes Eternity and Trinity
Chicoutimi and Ha-Ha Bay
The Inhabitants—Good Living
Cedar-Plums Like—Names
Death of Thomas Carlyle
Carlyle from American Points of View
A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit
A Week’s Visit to Boston
The Boston of To-Day
My Tribute to Four Poets
Millet’s Pictures—Last Items
Birds—And a Caution
Samples of My Common-Place Book
My Native Sand and Salt Once More
Hot Weather New York
“Custer’s Last Rally”
Some Old Acquaintances—Memories
A Discovery of Old Age
A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
Other Concord Notations
Boston Common—More of Emerson
An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
Only a New Ferry Boat
Death of Longfellow
Starting Newspapers
The Great Unrest of Which We Are Part
By Emerson’s Grave
At Present Writing—Personal
After Trying a Certain Book
Final Confessions—Literary Tests
Nature and Democracy—Morality
 
II. Collect
One or Two Index Items
Democratic Vistas: Paras. 1–29
Democratic Vistas: Paras. 30–59
Democratic Vistas: Paras. 60–89
Democratic Vistas: Paras. 90–119
Democratic Vistas: Paras. 120–132
Origins of Attempted Secession
Preface, 1855, to First Issue of “Leaves of Grass,” Brooklyn, N.Y.
Preface, 1872, To “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free”
Preface, 1876, To the Two-Volume Centennial Edition of L. of G. and “Two Rivulets”
Poetry To-Day in America—Shakspere—The Future
A Memorandum at a Venture
Death of Abraham Lincoln
Two Letters
 
III. Notes Left Over
Nationality—(and Yet)
Emerson’s Books, (the Shadows of Them)
Ventures, on an Old Theme
British Literature
Darwinism—(then Furthermore)
“Society”
The Tramp and Strike Questions
Democracy in the New World,
Foundation Stages—Then Others
General Suffrage, Elections, &c.
Who Gets the Plunder?
Friendship, (the Real Article)
Lacks and Wants Yet
Rulers Strictly out of the Masses
Monuments—The Past and Present
Little or Nothing New, after All
A Lincoln Reminiscence
Freedom
Book-Classes—America’s Literature
Our Real Culmination
An American Problem
The Last Collective Compaction
 
IV. Pieces in Early Youth
Dough-Face Song
Death in the School-Room (a Fact)
One Wicked Impulse!
The Last Loyalist
Wild Frank’s Return
The Boy Lover
The Child and the Profligate
Lingave’s Temptation
Little Jane
Dumb Kate
Talk to an Art-Union
Blood-Money
Wounded in the House of Friends
Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight
 
V. November Boughs
Our Eminent Visitors
The Bible as Poetry
Father Taylor (and Oratory)
The Spanish Element in Our Nationality
What Lurks Behind Shakspere’s Historical Plays?
A Thought on Shakspere
Robert Burns as Poet and Person
A Word about Tennyson
Slang in America
An Indian Bureau Reminiscence
Some Diary Notes at Random
Some War Memoranda
Five Thousand Poems
The Old Bowery
Notes to Late English Books
Abraham Lincoln
New Orleans in 1848
Small Memoranda
Last of the War Cases
Elias Hicks: Portrait in Old Age
Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks
George Fox (and Shakspere)

I. Specimen Days   
1. A Happy Hour’s Command   
     
DOWN in the Woods, July 2d, 1882.—If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862–’65, Nature-notes of 1877–’81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour,—(and what a day! what an hour just passing! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me body and soul)—to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages, 1 and let the melange’s lackings and wants of connection take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow; how few of life’s days and hours (and they not by relative value or proportion, but by chance) are ever noted. Probably another point too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour’s command, which seems curiously imperative. May-be, if I don’t do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.      1   


Note 1.  The pages from 8 to 20 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through ’63, ’64, and ’65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these I brief’d cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bedside, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch’d down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil’d and creas’d livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten’d with a pin. I have them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch’d here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 26 to 81 are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-smutch’d little note-books.   
  Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey—Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve miles away)—with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c., can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from “Entering a Long Farm-Lane” onward was mostly written.   
  The COLLECT afterward gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net.   
  I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen’d, wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in statement. [back]

I. Specimen Days   
2. Answer to an Insisting Friend   
     
YOU ask for items, details of my early life—of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far back Netherlands stock on the maternal side—of the region where I was born and raised, and my father and mother before me, and theirs before them—with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of “Leaves of Grass.” Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things—that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week’s half-sickness and confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet unfulfill’d, probably abandon’d,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at any thing to save labor; but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey.