Song of Myself

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,

What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,

What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,

And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the

morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,

I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,

I am afoot with my vision.

By the city's quadrangular houses — in log huts, camping

with lumbermen,

Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet

bed,

Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and

parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,

Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new

purchase,

Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down

the shallow river,

Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where

the buck turns furiously at the hunter,

Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where

the otter is feeding on fish,

Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where

the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;

Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton

plant, over the rice in its low moist field,

Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum

and slender shoots from the gutters,

Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over

the delicate blue-flower flax,

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer

there with the rest,

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,

Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the

leaves of the brush,

Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the

wheatlot,

Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great

gold-bug drops through the dark,

Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and

flows to the meadow,

Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous

shuddering of their hides,

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,

Where the human heart beats with terrible throes under its

ribs,

Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in

it myself and looking composedly down,)

Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat

hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,

Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,

Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,

Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,

Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,

Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are

corrupting below;

Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the

regiments,

Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,

Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my

countenance,

Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood

outside,

Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good

game of base-ball,

At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,

bull-dances, drinking, laughter,

At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash,

sucking the juice through a straw,

At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,

At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings,

house-raisings;

Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,

screams, weeps,

Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks

are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,

Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the

stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,

Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with

short jerks,

Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and

lonesome prairie,

Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square

miles far and near,

Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the

long-lived swan is curving and winding,

Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs

her near-human laugh,

Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid

by the high weeds,

Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground

with their heads out,

Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery,

Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled

trees,

Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the

marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,

Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm

noon,

Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the

walnut-tree over the wall,

Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired

leaves,

Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,

Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon,

through the office or public hall;

Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd

with the new and old,

Pleas'd with the homely woman as well as the handsome,

Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and

talks melodiously,

Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the whitewash'd church,

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,

Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the

clouds, or down a lane or along the beach,

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,)

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 flickle 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 life 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 listeing 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.