How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood! Will you speak before I am gone? It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men. Walking the old hills of Judæa with the beautiful gentle God by my side. Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals. Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs, Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself and looking composedly down,). And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth. The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him. Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go. Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh. Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves. And brown ants in the little wells beneath them. See myself in prison shaped like another man. If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing. One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same. The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them. All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation. Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported. How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men; All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine. Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain. The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece. The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion. I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid. The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach. Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.). What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes. Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter. 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 excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd. Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within. Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive. And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green. Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase. Does the daylight astonish? I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors. I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d. Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it. Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest. I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion. Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball. His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead. My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am. And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific. My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths. Less the reminders of properties told my words. Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them. Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away. The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron. Undrape! 4 I loafe and invite my soul, I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals. And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own. I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me. The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair. You laggards there on guard! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes. The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights. becoming already a creator. How he saved the drifting company at last. The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations. At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on. And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet. Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical. She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. Whitman's most beloved poem, "Song of Myself," illustrated, illuminated, and presented like never before. hang your whole weight upon me. I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning. He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low. Song of Myself by Walt Whitmanis one of the must read Walt Whitman poems. The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head. Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me. The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind. Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth! Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me. In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs. Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" is the most famous of the twelve poems originally published in Leaves of Grass, the collection for which the poet is most widely known. Whitman, who praises words "as simple as grass" (section 39) forgoes standard verse and stanza patterns in favor of a simple, legible style that can appeal to a mass audience.[7]. They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch. Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them. A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass. You my rich blood! Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them. Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. In Whitman, Alabama. Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time. I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself. what am I? The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats. My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps. Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game. have you reckon’d the earth much? Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side, (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.). My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs. Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves. The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick. Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready. It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all. I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems. Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand. Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see. Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over! I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name. Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks. Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg’d out at their waists. I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop. We have had ducking and deprecating about enough. Summary and Form. Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy. I accept Reality and dare not question it. Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force. The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day. In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved. The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start. 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 2 And what I assume you shall assume, 3 For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women. The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine. By God, you shall not go down! The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions. Like most of the other poems, it too was revised extensively, reaching its final permutation in 1881. I do not know what it is any more than he. I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured. Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly. Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him. 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.). Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going. I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth. Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip. It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried. Running to … The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them. Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine. I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps. In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach. Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab. Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord. Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie. His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us. Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil. Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs. And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon. Why should I pray? He identifies aloneness as a treasurable essence of the essential being to be celebrated. The steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars. Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d. The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs. And will never be any more perfection than there is now. The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them. The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl’d whiskers. I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish. At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch, Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,). Whitman is representative of all humanity because, he says, the voices of diverse people speak through him — voices of men, animals, and even insects. In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky. My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat. At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw. In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders. It has been credited as "representing the core of Whitman's poetic vision."[1]. They are but parts, any thing is but a part. Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land. On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms. 17 October 2011. Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up. I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise. Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? Song of Myself aims at revealing that the idea of individuality is just temporary but also transcendent. long live exact demonstration! Still nodding night—mad naked summer night. In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes. Simon Wilder delivers this poem to Monty Kessler in With Honors. That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be. And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart. That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah. Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea. my breath is tight in its throat. What makes the fifth section of “Song of Myself” so audacious, and so moving, is Whitman’s decision to address this matter directly, enacting the marriage of the body and soul that from time immemorial has governed the lyric impulse—“a kelson of creation,” the girder bolted to the keel of the boat in which the lover sails, alert to everything under the sun. Flames and ether making a rush for my veins. My words itch at your ears till you understand them. I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears. This the common air that bathes the globe. And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps. This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and... For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready. I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it. And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me. I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat. for I see you. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from. Walt Whitman’s iconic collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, has earned a reputation as a sacred American text. Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), reproduced by permission. How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm. How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and would not give it up. For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings. See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that. Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night. Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate. Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak. Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. And chalk’d in large letters on a board. I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck. [1], The poem is written in Whitman's signature free verse style. “Song of Myself” is a sprawling combination of biography, sermon, and poetic meditation. Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp. In the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself" came first in the series of twelve untitled poems, dominating the volume not only by its sheer bulk, but also by its brilliant display of Whitman's innovative techniques and original themes. As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers. Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance. I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs. Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves. Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. (It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you, Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.). Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand. In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador. They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself. The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray, The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;). I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen. I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools. Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away. The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, This is the city and I am one of the citizens. Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand. You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses. Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you. Redding, Patrick. "A Note on Whitman’s Symbolism in 'Song of Myself'". The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless. His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically. This edition of Song of Myself is from Whitman's deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass. They do not think whom they souse with spray. I do not snivel that snivel the world over. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses. My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs. Others will punctually come for ever and ever. And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years. And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy? The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels. Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,). I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting. The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet. Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest. I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels. And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else. Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” offers a vast portrait of American life in the nineteenth century. what have you to confide to me? This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is. The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it. Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer’d. Myself moving forward then and now and forever. The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale. The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold. The poem was first published without sections[2] as the first of twelve untitled poems in the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders. Houses and roof perfumes . nest of guarded duplicate eggs! [3], Following its 1855 publication, "Song of Myself" was immediately singled out by critics and readers for particular attention, and the work remains among the most acclaimed and influential in American poetry. Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious; By my life-lumps! I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots. I resist any thing better than my own diversity. How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves. I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing. 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,). The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs. He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table. The title "Song of Myself" did not come about until 1881, going through various permutations that include "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," "Walt Whitman," and "Myself.… It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness. "Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'". [12][13], The poem is central to the plot of the play I and You by Lauren Gunderson.[14]. Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach. Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum. Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun. Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance. This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us. And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue. The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms. Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests. Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern. Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death. Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades. ’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men. Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson. Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed. I underlying causes to balance them at last. My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel. For after we start we never lie by again. Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts. A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips. And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. Walt Whitman realizes this in his Song of Myself, where, in questioning the idea of self, he questions other related ideas such as the body, death, and the relationship between the individual, others, and nature. On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them. The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. 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. The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way? Little streams pass’d all over their bodies. Whitman himself made such comparisons, … The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. Whitman gives this "Me Myself" emotions, gestures, and facial expressions, as if it were another person living inside him. Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side. Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded. Daniel Redman chants Leaves of Grass to tell the story of queer history. They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d. All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me. No shutter’d room or school can commune with me. By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient. Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink. This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar. Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure. It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out. This is the original 1855 version of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait. The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies. They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms. The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries. And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears. Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers. I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house. His poem closely defines right-awareness as a relaxed or “loafe” approach to the most subtle experiences. But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail. For one thing, it represents a huge break from the formal traditions of the past. Enjoy Song of Myself by Walt Whitman today! We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d. I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. What is removed drops horribly in a pail; In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! We should surely bring up again where we now stand. I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you. I was 18, when my wonderful comparative literature professor, David Lenson, sent me off to the library at the University of Massachusetts to read “Song of Myself.” (I’d made a dismissive remark in class about the poet based on minimal knowledge.) Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again. Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female. Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation. In the poem, Whitman emphasizes an all-powerful "I" which serves as narrator, who should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo call’d the ordure of humanity. This most famous of Whitman’s works was one of the original twelve pieces in the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms. The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged. You are also asking me questions and I hear you. The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case, (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room;). In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers; Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!).