II

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,

To adorn the burial-house of him I love? 80

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,

With the Fourth-month eve at sundown,

and the gray smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,

With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,

In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,

With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows, And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,

And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.

In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms), Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,

The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,

And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,

And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,

Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,

Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

Approach strong deliveress,

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,

Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.

150

From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,

And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,

And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night,

The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,

And the soul turning to thee O vast and wellveil'd death,

And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, 160 Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.

15

To the tally of my soul,

Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,

With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.

Loud in the pines and cedars dim,

Clear in the freshness moist and the swampperfume,

And I with my comrades there in the night.

While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,

As to long panoramas of visions.

And I saw askant the armies,

170

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,

And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),

And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,

I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought, 180 They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,

The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,

And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume, I know I am restless and make others so, I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,3

For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them,

I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me,

I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule,

And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,

And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;

Dear camerado! I confess I have urged

you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,

Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

1865.

ABOARD AT A SHIP'S HELM ABOARD at a ship's helm,

A young steersman steering with care.

3 In the original edition there followed here two lines since omitted:

(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;

It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artillery man);

Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,

An ocean-bell-O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.

For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,

The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking

speeds away under her gray sails, The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gayly and safe.

ONE'S-SELF I SING 2

ONE'S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse -I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

1867, 1871.

NOT THE PILOT1

1867.

NOT the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled;

Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,

By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination,

More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose a march for these States,

For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence.

1867.

1 Compare Whitman's Democratic Vistas, in the Complete Prose Works, pp. 197-250; especially pp. 199, 200, 202, 203: --

..

Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision. For, I say, the true nationality of the States, the genuine union, when we come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither the written law nor, (as is generally supposed), either self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects -but the fervid and tremendous Idea, meiting everything else with resistless heat, and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, emotional power.

TEARS

TEARS! tears! tears!

In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,

Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,

Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;

O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?

What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?

Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;

O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!

2 This poem is now placed first in the standard editions of Whitman's Poems. In its original form, as the Inscription of the 1867 edition, it read: -

SMALL is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest - namely, ONE'S-SELF-that wondrous thing, a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, sing.

Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, 18 worthy for the muse; I say the Form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male, I sing,

Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak the word of the modern, the word EN-MASSE.

My Days I sing, and the Lands-with interstice I knew of hapless War.

O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey link'd to gether let us go.

This version, in a slightly revised form, beginning Small the theme of my chant,' is now printed as a separate poem in the final edition of Leaves of Grass p. 397.