Kitabı oku: «Leaves of Grass», sayfa 4

  Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy, (behind me

      he rides at the drape of the day,)

  Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the

      moccasin print,

  By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,

  Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;

  Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,

  Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,

  Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,

  Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,

  Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side,

  Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,

  Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the

      diameter of eighty thousand miles,

  Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,

  Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,

  Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,

  Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,

  I tread day and night such roads.

  I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,

  And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green.

  I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,

  My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

  I help myself to material and immaterial,

  No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.

  I anchor my ship for a little while only,

  My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.

  I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a

      pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

  I ascend to the foretruck,

  I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest,

  We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,

  Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,

  The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is

      plain in all directions,

  The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my

      fancies toward them,

  We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to

      be engaged,

  We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still

      feet and caution,

  Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city,

  The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities

      of the globe.

  I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,

  I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,

  I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

  My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,

  They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.

  I understand the large hearts of heroes,

  The courage of present times and all times,

  How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the

      steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

  How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of

      days and faithful of nights,

  And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will

      not desert you;

  How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and

      would not give it up,

  How he saved the drifting company at last,

  How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the

      side of their prepared graves,

  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,

  I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

  The disdain and calmness of martyrs,

  The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her

      children gazing on,

  The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,

      blowing, cover’d with sweat,

  The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous

      buckshot and the bullets,

  All these I feel or am.

  I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,

  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,

  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the

      ooze of my skin,

  I fall on the weeds and stones,

  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

  Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.

  Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the

      wounded person,

  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

  I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,

  Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

  Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,

  I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,

  They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

  I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,

  Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,

  White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared

      of their fire-caps,

  The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

  Distant and dead resuscitate,

  They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.

  I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment,

  I am there again.

  Again the long roll of the drummers,

  Again the attacking cannon, mortars,

  Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

  I take part, I see and hear the whole,

  The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim’d shots,

  The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,

  Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,

  The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion,

  The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

  Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves

      with his hand,

  He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments.

       34

  Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,

  (I tell not the fall of Alamo,

  Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,

  The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)

  ’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve

      young men.

  Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their baggage for

      breastworks,

  Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times their

      number, was the price they took in advance,

  Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,

  They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and

      seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of war.

  They were the glory of the race of rangers,

  Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,

  Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,

  Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,

  Not a single one over thirty years of age.

  The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and

      massacred, it was beautiful early summer,

  The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight.

  None obey’d the command to kneel,

  Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,

  A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead

      lay together,

  The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there,

  Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away,

  These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of muskets,

  A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more

      came to release him,

  The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood.

  At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies;

  That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

       35

  Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?

  Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

  List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.

  Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)

  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.

  We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d,

  My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.

  We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water,

  On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire,

      killing all around and blowing up overhead.

  Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,

  Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain,

      and five feet of water reported,

  The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold

      to give them a chance for themselves.

  The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,

  They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

  Our frigate takes fire,

  The other asks if we demand quarter?

  If our colors are struck and the fighting done?

  Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,

  We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part

      of the fighting.

  Only three guns are in use,

  One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s main-mast,

  Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry and

      clear his decks.

  The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially

      the main-top,

  They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

  Not a moment’s cease,

  The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.

  One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

  Serene stands the little captain,

  He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,

  His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

  Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

       36

  Stretch’d and still lies the midnight,

  Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,

  Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the

      one we have conquer’d,

  The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a

      countenance white as a sheet,

  Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin,

  The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully

      curl’d whiskers,

  The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,

  The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,

  Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh

      upon the masts and spars,

  Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,

  Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,

  A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,

  Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by

      the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,

  The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,

  Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long,

      dull, tapering groan,

  These so, these irretrievable.

       37

  You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!

  In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d!

  Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,

  See myself in prison shaped like another man,

  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

  For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,

  It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.

  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.)

  Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried

      and sentenced.

  Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,

  My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.

  Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,

  I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

       38

  Enough! enough! enough!

  Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!

  Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,

  I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

  That I could forget the mockers and insults!

  That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the

      bludgeons and hammers!

  That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and

      bloody crowning.

  I remember now,

  I resume the overstaid fraction,

  The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,

  Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

  I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average

      unending procession,

  Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,

  Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,

  The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.

  Eleves, I salute you! come forward!

  Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

       39

  The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?

  Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

  Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?

  Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?

  The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?

  Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,

  They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

  Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d

      head, laughter, and naivete,

  Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,

  They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,

  They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of

      the glance of his eyes.

       40

  Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!

  You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

  Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

  Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

  Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,

  And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,

  And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

  Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,

  When I give I give myself.

  You there, impotent, loose in the knees,

  Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,

  Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,

  I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,

  And any thing I have I bestow.

  I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,

  You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

  To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,

  On his right cheek I put the family kiss,

  And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

  On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.

  (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

  To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.

  Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,

  Let the physician and the priest go home.

  I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,

  O despairer, here is my neck,

  By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

  I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,

  Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,

  Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

  Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,

  Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,

  I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,

  And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

       41

  I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,

  And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

  I heard what was said of the universe,

  Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;

  It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?

  Magnifying and applying come I,

  Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,

  Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,

  Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

  Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,

  In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix

      engraved,

  With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,

  Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,

  Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,

  (They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise and fly

      and sing for themselves,)

  Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself,

      bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,

  Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,

  Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves

      driving the mallet and chisel,

  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,

  Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me

      than the gods of the antique wars,

  Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

  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,

  Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels

      with shirts bagg’d out at their waists,

  The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,

  Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his

      brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;

  What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and

      not filling the square rod then,

  The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,

  Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d,

  The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of

      the supremes,

  The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the

      best, and be as prodigious;

  By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,

  Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows.

      42

  A call in the midst of the crowd,

  My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

  Come my children,

  Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,

  Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on

      the reeds within.

  Easily written loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your

      climax and close.

  My head slues round on my neck,

  Music rolls, but not from the organ,

  Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

  Ever the hard unsunk ground,

  Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever

      the air and the ceaseless tides,

  Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,

  Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that

      breath of itches and thirsts,

  Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides

      and bring him forth,

  Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,

  Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

  Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,

  To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,

  Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,

  Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment

      receiving,

  A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

  This is the city and I am one of the citizens,

  Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets,

      newspapers, schools,

  The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories,

      stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.

  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,)

  I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest

      is deathless with me,

  What I do and say the same waits for them,

  Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

  I know perfectly well my own egotism,

  Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,

  And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

  Not words of routine this song of mine,

  But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;

  This printed and bound book—but the printer and the

      printing-office boy?

  The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid

      in your arms?

  The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but

      the pluck of the captain and engineers?

  In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and

      hostess, and the look out of their eyes?

  The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?

  The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?

  Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,

  And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

       43

  I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,

  My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,

  Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,

  Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,

  Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,

  Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in

      the circle of obis,

  Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,

  Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and

      austere in the woods a gymnosophist,

  Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas admirant,

      minding the Koran,

  Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife,

      beating the serpent-skin drum,

  Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing

      assuredly that he is divine,

  To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting

      patiently in a pew,

  Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till

      my spirit arouses me,

  Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,

  Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

  One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like

      man leaving charges before a journey.

  Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,

  Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,

  I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair

      and unbelief.

  How the flukes splash!

  How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!

  Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,

  I take my place among you as much as among any,

  The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,

  And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely

      the same.

  I do not know what is untried and afterward,

  But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

  Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, not

      single one can it fall.

  It cannot fall the young man who died and was buried,

  Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,

  Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back

      and was never seen again,

  Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with

      bitterness worse than gall,

  Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,

  Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo

      call’d the ordure of humanity,

  Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,

  Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,

  Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads

      that inhabit them,

  Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.

       44

  It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.

  What is known I strip away,

  I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

  The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

  We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,

  There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

  Births have brought us richness and variety,

  And other births will bring us richness and variety.

  I do not call one greater and one smaller,

  That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

  Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?

  I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,

  All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,

  (What have I to do with lamentation?)

  I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.

  My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,

  On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,

  All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

  Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,

  Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,

  I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

  And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

  Long I was hugg’d close—long and long.

  Immense have been the preparations for me,

  Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.

  Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,

  For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,

  They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

  Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

  My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

  For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

  The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

  Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

  Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it

      with care.

  All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,

  Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

      45

  O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity!

  O manhood, balanced, florid and full.

  My lovers suffocate me,

  Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,

  Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,

  Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and

      chirping over my head,

  Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,

  Lighting on every moment of my life,

  Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,

  Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.

  Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

  Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows

      after and out of itself,

  And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

  I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,

  And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of

      the farther systems.

  Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,

  Outward and outward and forever outward.

  My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,

  He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,

  And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

  There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,

  If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,

      were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would

      not avail the long run,

  We should surely bring up again where we now stand,

  And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

  A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do

      not hazard the span or make it impatient,

  They are but parts, any thing is but a part.

  See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,

  Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

  My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,

  The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,

  The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.

       46

  I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and

      never will be measured.

  I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)

  My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,

  No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,

  I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,

  I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,

  But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

  My left hand hooking you round the waist,

  My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

  Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,

  You must travel it for yourself.

  It is not far, it is within reach,

  Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,

  Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

  Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,

  Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

  If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand

      on my hip,

  And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,

  For after we start we never lie by again.

  This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven,

  And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs,

      and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we

      be fill’d and satisfied then?

  And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

  You are also asking me questions and I hear you,

  I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

  Sit a while dear son,

  Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,

  But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you

      with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

  Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,

  Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

  You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every

      moment of your life.

  Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,

  Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,