The plan
for Spiritual Reading Group in March was that Susan Southall would introduce us
to the poetry of the American poet Walt Whitman. Events have overtaken us. The
Group will reconvene at a time when the Carmelite Library re-opens. For now
though, here are the poems for reading. Susan’s paper is also posted on this
blog.
On the
Beach at Night Alone 1856
On the beach at
night alone,
As the old
mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the
bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the
future.
A vast
similitude interlocks all,
All spheres,
grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets
All distances of
place however wide,
All distances of
time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all
living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous,
watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations,
colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities
that have existed or may exist on this globe or any globe,
All lives and
deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast
similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall
forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Song of Myself
1855
…
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 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 we
lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;
You settled your
head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the
shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged our tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till
your felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose
and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and
argument of the earth;
And I know that
the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that
the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the
men ever born are also my brothers… and the woman 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 wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and pokeweed.
…
To a Common
Prostitute 1860
Be composed — be
at ease with me — I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun
excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the
leaves to rustle for you, do my
words
refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I
charge you that you make
preparation
to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till
I come.
Till then I salute you with a significant look that
you do not forget me.
I Hear it was Charged against Me 1860
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to
destroy institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with
the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every
city of these States inland and
seaboard,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.
Reconciliation 1865-66
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must
in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night
incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again,
this soil’d world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the
coffin — I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white
face in the coffin.
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim 1865
A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by
the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out
here untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen
blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest
the first just lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with
well-gray’d hair, and flesh all
sunken
about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step — and who are you my child
and darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third — a face nor child nor old, very
calm, as of beautiful yellow-white
ivory;
Young man I think I know you — I think this face is the
face of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he
lies.
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice 1860
Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the
problems of freedom yet,
Those who love each other shall become invincible,
They shall yet make Columbia victorious.
…..
One from Massachussets shall be a Missourian’s
comrade,
From Maine and from hot California, and another an
Oregonese, shall be friends
triune,
More precious to each other than all the riches of the
earth.
……
It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see
manly affection,
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face
lightly,
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.
These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops
of iron,
I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of
lovers tie you.
(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so
cohere.)
Look Down Fair Moon 1865
Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces
ghastly, swollen, purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 1865-66
1.
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in
the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning
spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the
west,
And thought of him I love.
2.
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night — O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d — O the black murk that hides
the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless — O helpless soul
of me!
O harsh sounding cloud that will not free my soul.
….
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening
the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities
draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of
crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of
the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of
faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the
sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand
voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d
around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where
amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
….
14
….
Come, lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge
curious,
And for love, sweet love — but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant to fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come,
come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously
sing the dead,
Lost in the lovely floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
….
15
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers
of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
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.
16
….
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west,
communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the
night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the
countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of
the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory
ever to keep, for the dead I
loved
so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands
— and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my
soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and
dim.
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