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. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth. All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation. The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud. This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger. becoming already a creator. Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting; Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass. The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? On Whitman's bicentennial, a contemporary poet finds a Whitmanic kinship with wonder, language, and the environment. I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me. Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him. I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy. I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment. Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water. If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough. or sailor from the sea? A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses. The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways. And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else. The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day. Nor any more youth or age than there is now. I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged. Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen. The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us. He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; The poem figures in the plot of the 2008 young adult novel Paper Towns by John Green. Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain. Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. 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 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 real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! Song of Myself: 35 By Walt Whitman. We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d. Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next. A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms. I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons. I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will. Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead? I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured. Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find. The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom. Walt Whitman’s pre-civil war masterpiece, “Song of Myself” is more than just a poem. The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time. Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav’d corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax. The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion. To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires. I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me. And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth. With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. 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!). Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them. And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons. Why should I pray? Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed. I act as the tongue of you" (Section 47), "I am large, I contain multitudes." The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp. Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun. The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are. My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket. Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle; Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure. Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. Poem Summary 'Song of Myself' is not a poem with a clear plotline or single point to make. The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding. Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient. At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw. The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet. Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure. What I do and say the same waits for them. Walt Whitman` s Leaves of Grass, ―Song of Myself‖, the first title that comes to our mind when one pronounces Whitman` s name. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" from Leaves of Grass (: Norton, 1973), Common Core State Standards Text Exemplars. [9] The "self" serves as a human ideal; in contrast to the archetypal self in epic poetry, this self is one of the common people rather than a hero. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go. And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart. The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race. Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo call’d the ordure of humanity. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen. I do not know what is untried and afterward. Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals. I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand. And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery. I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms. Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest. Undrape! Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all? And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him. Song of Myself, 1 [I Celebrate myself] Walt Whitman - 1819-1892. And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides. Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man. Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars. The imagery and message is so incredibly deep and complex that it would take several pages to analytically explain. And such as it is to be of these more or less I am. Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil. He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table. Will you speak before I am gone? Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed. Song of Myself Section 1 by Walt Whitman: Summary and Analysis The very beginning of the poem is characterized by what Whitman himself called 'the vehemence of pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind of still to be formed America from the folds, the superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stifling anti-democratic authorities of Asiatic and European past'. The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer. Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather. Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, ... (section 15). In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night. who will soonest be through with his supper? Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth. Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis. This is the city and I am one of the citizens. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on. Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs. Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary. I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself. One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same. Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves. Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt! What is a man anyhow? I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy. The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels. Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! "Song of Myself" is an American classic, but we encourage you to exercise your own "self-reliance" by being open in your own reading of it. Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you. Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness. The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction. This song is set in different sections. "Walt Whitman's Catalogues: Rhetorical Means for Two Journeys in 'Song of Myself'". I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious. The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood. Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw. And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small. That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty. Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty. And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it. The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats, I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,). How could I answer the child? They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me. I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other. I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty. Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes. Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning. I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then. If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. Canadian doctor and long-time Whitman friend Richard Maurice Bucke analyzed the poem in his influential and widely read 1898 book Cosmic Consciousness, as part of his investigation of the development of man's mystic relation to the infinite. His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band. The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other. With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums. As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change. I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice. I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil. My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite. My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle; Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy, (behind me he rides at the drape of the day,). You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. [1], The poem is written in Whitman's signature free verse style. And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me. Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial. Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore. Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters; Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders. Old age superbly rising! Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck. How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm. In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close. Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy. But call any thing back again when I desire it. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house. And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good. The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel. what have you to confide to me? His poem closely defines right-awareness as a relaxed or “loafe” approach to the most subtle experiences. And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones. How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me. The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them. Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests. 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. It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape. The idea of individuality is just as lucky to die is different from what any one supposed it to..., song of myself the juice through a countenance white as a treasurable essence of greatest... Whatever I touch or am touch ’ d breasts of melons, each and! 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