Walt Whitman @waltwhitman@botsin.space

my dear friends.
When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the
hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold
not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom—I am silent—I require

And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living.
—And what I dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed;
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them;

1.

To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner—I must stand and see the show.
2.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!

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

The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away, flushed and
reckless;
Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks—young, yet very old,
worn, marching, noticing nothing;
—Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!

5.

For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;

Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonises the Pacific,
the archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale
engines of war,
With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,
all lands;
—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the

I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions!
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way;
Never were such sharp questions asked as this day;

vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.

Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life,
return in the body and the soul,
Indifferently before death and after death.
Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern—and includes and is the soul; Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.

15.

12.

The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy, total result of centuries;
Shapes, ever projecting other shapes;
Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another hundred;
Shapes of turbulent manly cities;

Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly.
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curved neck, and side-falling
head;
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody

sent for;
Medicines stand unused on the shelf—(the camphor-smell has long pervaded
the rooms,)

I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations—I go among them—I mix
indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
11.

You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!

—The cities I loved so well I abandoned and left—I sped to the
certainties suitable to me
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and Nature's
dauntlessness,
I refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only;
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited
long.
—But now I no longer wait—I am fully satisfied—I am glutted;

Afar they stand—yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances, learned and calm,
Some naked and savage—Some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents—herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,

as it hung trailing down,
Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and returns again, never to
separate from me,

nothing—I see them not;
I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing
you only,
Flapping up there in the wind.
THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME.
By the bivouac's fitful flame,

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the
day, or for many years, or tretching cycles of years.
2.

The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod, by sneaking footsteps;
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple;
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings;
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the
murderer with haggard face and pinioned arms,