Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman

• Editore: Youcanprint
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9788827815144
• Argomento: Letteratura
• Categoria: Poesia

In 1855, Walt Whitman published — at his own expense — the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, which eschewed the general society and culture of the time, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, the monumental work was condemned as "immoral." Whitman continued evolving Leaves of Grass despite the controversy, growing his influential work decades after its first appearance by adding new poems with each new Printing.

BOOK III

Song of Myself

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night,
and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and
am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain'd by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, ac...

Indice dei contenuti

• BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS
• One's-Self I Sing
• As I Ponder'd in Silence
• In Cabin'd Ships at Sea
• To Foreign Lands
• To a Historian
• To Thee Old Cause
• Eidolons
• For Him I Sing
• When I Read the Book
• Beginning My Studies
• Beginners
• To the States
• On Journeys Through the States
• To a Certain Cantatrice
• Me Imperturbe
• Savantism
• The Ship Starting
• I Hear America Singing
• What Place Is Besieged?
• Still Though the One I Sing
• Shut Not Your Doors
• Poets to Come
• To You
• Thou Reader
• BOOK II
• BOOK III
• BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM
• From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
• I Sing the Body Electric
• A Woman Waits for Me
• Spontaneous Me
• One Hour to Madness and Joy
• Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
• Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
• We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd
• O Hymen! O Hymenee!
• I Am He That Aches with Love
• Native Moments
• Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City
• I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
• Facing West from California's Shores
• As Adam Early in the Morning
• BOOK V. CALAMUS
• Scented Herbage of My Breast
• Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
• For You, O Democracy
• These I Singing in Spring
• Not Heaving from My Ribb'd Breast Only
• Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
• The Base of All Metaphysics
• Recorders Ages Hence
• When I Heard at the Close of the Day
• Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
• Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
• Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
• Trickle Drops
• City of Orgies
• Behold This Swarthy Face
• I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
• To a Stranger
• This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
• I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
• The Prairie-Grass Dividing
• When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame
• We Two Boys Together Clinging
• A Promise to California
• Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
• No Labor-Saving Machine
• A Glimpse
• A Leaf for Hand in Hand
• Earth, My Likeness
• I Dream'd in a Dream
• What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
• To the East and to the West
• Sometimes with One I Love
• To a Western Boy
• Fast Anchor'd Eternal O Love!
• Among the Multitude
• O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
• That Shadow My Likeness
• Full of Life Now
• BOOK VI
• BOOK VII
• BOOK VIII
• BOOK IX
• BOOK X
• BOOK XI
• BOOK XII
• BOOK XIII
• BOOK XIV
• BOOK XV
• BOOK XVI
• Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
• BOOK XVII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE
• Pioneers! O Pioneers!
• To You
• France [the 18th Year of these States
• Myself and Mine
• Year of Meteors [1859-60
• With Antecedents
• BOOK XVIII
• BOOK XIX. SEA-DRIFT
• As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life
• Tears
• To the Man-of-War-Bird
• Aboard at a Ship's Helm
• On the Beach at Night
• The World below the Brine
• On the Beach at Night Alone
• Song for All Seas, All Ships
• Patroling Barnegat
• After the Sea-Ship
• BOOK XX. BY THE ROADSIDE
• Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
• A Hand-Mirror
• Gods
• Germs
• Thoughts
• Perfections
• O Me! O Life!
• To a President
• I Sit and Look Out
• To Rich Givers
• The Dalliance of the Eagles
• Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]
• A Farm Picture
• A Child's Amaze
• The Runner
• Beautiful Women
• Mother and Babe
• Thought
• Visor'd
• Thought
• Gliding O'er all
• Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
• Thought
• To Old Age
• Locations and Times
• Offerings
• To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]
• BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS
• Eighteen Sixty-One
• Beat! Beat! Drums!
• From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
• Song of the Banner at Daybreak
• Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
• Virginia—The West
• City of Ships
• The Centenarian's Story
• Cavalry Crossing a Ford
• Bivouac on a Mountain Side
• An Army Corps on the March
• By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame
• Come Up from the Fields Father
• Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
• A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
• A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
• As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods
• Not the Pilot
• Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me
• The Wound-Dresser
• Long, Too Long America
• Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
• Dirge for Two Veterans
• Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
• I Saw Old General at Bay
• The Artilleryman's Vision
• Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
• Not Youth Pertains to Me
• Race of Veterans
• World Take Good Notice
• O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
• Look Down Fair Moon
• Reconciliation
• How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]
• As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
• Delicate Cluster
• To a Certain Civilian
• Lo, Victress on the Peaks
• Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]
• Adieu to a Soldier
• Turn O Libertad
• To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod
• BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
• O Captain! My Captain!
• Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
• This Dust Was Once the Man
• BOOK XXIII
• Reversals
• BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS
• The Return of the Heroes
• There Was a Child Went Forth
• Old Ireland
• The City Dead-House
• This Compost
• To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire
• Unnamed Land
• Song of Prudence
• The Singer in the Prison
• Warble for Lilac-Time
• Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]
• Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
• Vocalism
• To Him That Was Crucified
• You Felons on Trial in Courts
• Laws for Creations
• To a Common Prostitute
• I Was Looking a Long While
• Thought
• Miracles
• Sparkles from the Wheel
• To a Pupil
• Unfolded out of the Folds
• What Am I After All
• Kosmos
• Others May Praise What They Like
• Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
• Tests
• The Torch
• O Star of France [1870-71]
• The Ox-Tamer
• Wandering at Morn
• With All Thy Gifts
• My Picture-Gallery
• The Prairie States
• BOOK XXV
• BOOK XXVI
• BOOK XXVII
• BOOK XXVIII
• Transpositions
• BOOK XXIX
• BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
• Whispers of Heavenly Death
• Chanting the Square Deific
• Of Him I Love Day and Night
• Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
• As If a Phantom Caress'd Me
• Assurances
• Quicksand Years
• That Music Always Round Me
• What Ship Puzzled at Sea
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
• O Living Always, Always Dying
• To One Shortly to Die
• Night on the Prairies
• Thought
• The Last Invocation
• As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
• Pensive and Faltering
• BOOK XXXI
• A Paumanok Picture
• BOOK XXXII. FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
• Faces
• The Mystic Trumpeter
• To a Locomotive in Winter
• O Magnet-South
• Mannahatta
• All Is Truth
• A Riddle Song
• Excelsior
• Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
• Thoughts
• Mediums
• Weave in, My Hardy Life
• Spain, 1873-74
• By Broad Potomac's Shore
• From Far Dakota's Canyons [June 25, 1876]
• Old War-Dreams
• Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
• As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
• A Clear Midnight
• BOOK XXXIII. SONGS OF PARTING
• Years of the Modern
• Ashes of Soldiers
• Thoughts
• Song at Sunset
• As at Thy Portals Also Death
• My Legacy
• Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
• Camps of Green
• The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]
• As They Draw to a Close
• Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
• The Untold Want
• Portals
• These Carols
• Now Finale to the Shore
• So Long!
• BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY
• Paumanok
• From Montauk Point
• To Those Who've Fail'd
• A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
• The Bravest Soldiers
• A Font of Type
• As I Sit Writing Here
• My Canary Bird
• Queries to My Seventieth Year
• The Wallabout Martyrs
• The First Dandelion
• America
• Memories
• To-Day and Thee
• After the Dazzle of Day
• Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
• Out of May's Shows Selected
• Halcyon Days
• Election Day, November, 1884
• With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
• Death of General Grant
• Red Jacket (From Aloft)
• Washington's Monument February, 1885
• Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
• Broadway
• To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
• Old Salt Kossabone
• The Dead Tenor
• Continuities
• Yonnondio
• Life
• "Going Somewhere"
• Small the Theme of My Chant
• True Conquerors
• The United States to Old World Critics
• The Calming Thought of All
• Thanks in Old Age
• Life and Death
• The Voice of the Rain
• Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here
• While Not the Past Forgetting
• The Dying Veteran
• Stronger Lessons
• A Prairie Sunset
• Twenty Years
• Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
• Twilight
• You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
• Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
• The Dead Emperor
• As the Greek's Signal Flame
• The Dismantled Ship
• Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
• An Evening Lull
• Old Age's Lambent Peaks
• After the Supper and Talk
• BOOKXXXV. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
• Lingering Last Drops
• Good-Bye My Fancy
• On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
• MY 71st Year
• Apparitions
• The Pallid Wreath
• An Ended Day
• Old Age's Ship & Crafty Death's
• To the Pending Year
• Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher
• Long, Long Hence
• Bravo, Paris Exposition!
• Interpolation Sounds
• To the Sun-Set Breeze
• Old Chants
• A Christmas Greeting
• Sounds of the Winter
• A Twilight Song
• When the Full-Grown Poet Came
• Osceola
• A Voice from Death
• A Persian Lesson
• The Commonplace
• "The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete"
• Mirages
• L. of G.'s Purport
• The Unexpress'd
• Grand Is the Seen
• Unseen Buds
• Good-Bye My Fancy!