O I could sing such
grandeurs
and glories about you!
Whitman
Now I make a leaf of Voices--for I have found nothing mightier than they
are,
And I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place.
2.
O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around
the globe.
All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practised and perfect organ? Where is the developed Soul?
For I see every word uttered thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
impossible on less terms.
I see brains and lips closed--tympans and temples unstruck,
Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,
Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering,
for ever ready, in all words.
_WHOSOEVER. _
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles,
follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work,
farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling,
eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but
you.
I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect--I only find no imperfection in you;
None but would subordinate you--I only am he who will never consent to
subordinate you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what
waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all,
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of
gold-coloured light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-
coloured light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams,
effulgently flowing for ever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are--you have slumbered upon yourself all your
life;
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what
is their return?
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk
others, they do not baulk me.
The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to
you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the
songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you;
These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--you are immense and
interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion,
dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you
are promulgates itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is
scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its
way.
_BEGINNERS. _
How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals;
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears
their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great
purchase.
_TO A PUPIL. _
1.
Is reform needed? Is it through you?
