Song of Myself

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. // I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. // My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, / Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, / I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death. // Creeds and schools in abeyance, / Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, / I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, / Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, / I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, / The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. // The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, / It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, / I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, / I am mad for it to be in contact with me. // The smoke of my own breath, / Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, / My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, / The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolor’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, // The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, / A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, / The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, / The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, / The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. // Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? / Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? / Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? // 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,) / You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, / You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, / You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

4

Trippers and askers surround me, / People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, / The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new, / My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, / The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, / The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations, / Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; / These come to me days and nights and go from me again, / But they are not the Me myself. // Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, / Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, / Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, / Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, / Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. // Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, / I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

6

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; / How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. // I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. // Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, / A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, / Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? // Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. // Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, / And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, / Growing among black folks as among white, / Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. // And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. // Tenderly will I use you curling grass, / It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, / It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, / It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps, / And here you are the mothers’ laps. // This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, / Darker than the colorless beards of old men, / Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. // O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, / And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. // I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, / And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. // What do you think has become of the young and old men? / And what do you think has become of the women and children? // They are alive and well somewhere, / The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, / And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. // All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

8

The little one sleeps in its cradle, / I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. // The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, / I peeringly view them from the top. // The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, / I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen. // The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders, / The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor, / The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls, / The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs, / The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, / The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, / The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd, / The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, / What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in fits, / What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, / What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain’d by decorum, / Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips, / I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart.

11

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, / Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; / Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. // She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, / She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. // Which of the young men does she like the best? / Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. // Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, / You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. // Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, / The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. // The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair, / Little streams pass’d all over their bodies. // An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies, / It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. // The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, / They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, / They do not think whom they souse with spray.

14

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, / Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, / The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close, / Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky. // The sharp-hoof ’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, / The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, / The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings, / I see in them and myself the same old law. // The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, / They scorn the best I can do to relate them. // I am enamour’d of growing out-doors, / Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, / Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses, / I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. // What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, / Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, / Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, / Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, / Scattering it freely forever.

15

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, / The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, / The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, / The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm, / The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready, / The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, / The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar, / The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, / The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, / 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 bedroom;) / The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, / He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; / The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table, / What is removed drops horribly in a pail; / The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, / The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass, / The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;) / The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race, / The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, / Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; / The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, / As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle, / The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, / The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof ’d garret and harks to the musical rain, / The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron, / The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale, / The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways, / As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers, / The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, / The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child, / The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill, / 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 canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, / The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, / The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions, / The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!) / 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;) / The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly, / The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips, / The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, / The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, / (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;) / The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries, / On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms, / The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, / The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle, / As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change, / The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar, / 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!) / Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground; / Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface, / The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe, / Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees, / Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas, / Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw, / Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them, / In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day’s sport, / The city sleeps and the country sleeps, / The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, / The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; / And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, / And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, / And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

17

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, / If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, / If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, / If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. // This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, / This the common air that bathes the globe.

18

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, / I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons. // Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? / I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. // I beat and pound for the dead, / I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. // Vivas to those who have fail’d! / And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! / And to those themselves who sank in the sea! / And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! / And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

19

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, / It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments with all, / I will not have a single person slighted or left away, / The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited, / The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; / There shall be no difference between them and the rest. // This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair, / This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, / This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, / This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. // Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? / Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. // Do you take it I would astonish? / Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? / Do I astonish more than they? // This hour I tell things in confidence, / I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

21

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, / The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, / The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into new tongue. // I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, / And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, / And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. // I chant the chant of dilation or pride, / We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, / I show that size is only development. // Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? / It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. // I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, / I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. // Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night! / Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! / Still nodding night—mad naked summer night. // Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth! / Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! / Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt! / Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! / Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! / Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! / Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth! / Smile, for your lover comes. // Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love! / O unspeakable passionate love.

25

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, / If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. // We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, / We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak. // My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, / With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. // Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, / It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, / Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then? // Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, / Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? / Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, / The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, / I underlying causes to balance them at last, / My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, / Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.) // My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, / Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me, / I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. // Writing and talk do not prove me, / I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, / With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

31

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, / And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, / And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, / And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, / And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, / And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, / And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. // I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, / And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, / And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, / But call any thing back again when I desire it. // In vain the speeding or shyness, / In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, / In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones, / In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, / In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, / In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, / In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, / In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, / In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador, / I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

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.

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?

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, / To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

49

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. // To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, / I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting, / I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors, / And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape. // And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, / I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, / I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons. // And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.) // I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven, / O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and pro- motions, / If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing? // Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest, / Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight, / Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck, / Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs. // I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night, / I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, / And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

50

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me. // Wrench'd and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,  / I sleep—I sleep long. // I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, / It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. // Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, / To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. // Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. // Do you see O my brothers and sisters? / It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.

51

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them. / And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. // Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? / 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.) // Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.) // I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab. // Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper? / Who wishes to walk with me? // Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. // I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. // The last scud of day holds back for me, / It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, / It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. // I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, / I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. // I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, / If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. // You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, / But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, / And filter and fibre your blood. // Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you.