Poems By Walt Whitman Part 31

Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul that, when you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impressed with your personality?

2.

O the magnet! the flesh over and over!

Go, dear friend! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness; Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.

LINKS.

1.

Think of the Soul; I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres; I do not know how, but I know it is so.

2.

Think of loving and being loved; I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.

3.

Think of the past; I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and your times.

The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes; All is inextricable--things, spirits, nature, nations, you too--from precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them); Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth; Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.

4.

Think of the time when you was not yet born; Think of times you stood at the side of the dying; Think of the time when your own body will be dying.

Think of spiritual results: Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pa.s.s into spiritual results.

Think of manhood, and you to be a man; Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman; The creation is womanhood; Have I not said that womanhood involves all?

Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?

_THE WATERS._

The world below the brine.

Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold--the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, gra.s.s, rushes--and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom: The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray.

Pa.s.sions there, wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths-- breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.

The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere: The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

_TO THE STATES._

TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?

What deepening twilight! Sc.u.m floating atop of the waters!

Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?

What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your Arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the President?

Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for reasons.

With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.

[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidents.h.i.+ps of Polk; of Taylor, succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857.]

_TEARS._

Tears! tears! tears!

In the night, in solitude, tears; On the white sh.o.r.e dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand; Tears--not a star s.h.i.+ning--all dark and desolate; Moist tears from the eyes of a m.u.f.fled head: --O who is that ghost?--that form in the dark, with tears?

What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?

Streaming tears--sobbing tears--throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach; O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!

O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace; But away, at night, as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosened ocean Of tears! tears! tears!

_A s.h.i.+P._

1.

Aboard, at the s.h.i.+p's helm, A young steersman, steering with care.

A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rocked by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, Ringing, ringing, to warn the s.h.i.+p from its wreck-place.

For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition, The bows turn,--the freighted s.h.i.+p, tacking, speeds away under her grey sails; The beautiful and n.o.ble s.h.i.+p, with all her precious wealth, speeds away gaily and safe.

2.

But O the s.h.i.+p, the immortal s.h.i.+p! O s.h.i.+p aboard the s.h.i.+p!

O s.h.i.+p of the body--s.h.i.+p of the soul--voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.