No More Learning

Hasten throat, and sound your last!
Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.

Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious enveloped messages delivering,
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in the dirt dropping,
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,
To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the seed leaving,
To troops out of me rising--they the tasks I have set promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing--their affection me more
clearly explaining,
To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of their
brains trying,
So I pass--a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for--death making me really
undying,--
The best of me then when no longer visible--for toward that I have been
incessantly preparing.

What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut
mouth?
Is there a single final farewell?


4.

My songs cease--I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I hid, I advance personally, solely to you.

Camerado! This is no book;
Who touches this touches a man.
(Is it night? Are we here alone? )
It is I you hold, and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.

O how your fingers drowse me!
Your breath falls around me like dew--your pulse lulls the tympans of my
ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious--enough.
Enough, O deed impromptu and secret!
Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summed-up past!


5.


Dear friend, whoever you are, here, take this kiss,
I give it especially to you--Do not forget me,

I feel like one who has done his work--I progress on,--(long enough have I
dallied with Life,)
The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct, awakening rays
about me--_So long_!
Remember my words--I love you--I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.




POSTSCRIPT.

While this Selection was passing through the press, it has been my
privilege to receive two letters from Mr. Whitman, besides another
communicated to me through a friend. I find my experience to be the same as
that of some previous writers: that, if one admires Whitman in reading his
books, one loves him on coming into any personal relation with him--even
the comparatively distant relation of letter-writing.

The more I have to thank the poet for the substance and tone of his
letters, and some particular expressions in them, the more does it become
incumbent upon me to guard against any misapprehension. He has had nothing
whatever to do with this Selection, as to either prompting, guiding, or
even ratifying it: except only that he did not prohibit my making two or
three verbal omissions in the _Prose Preface to the Leaves of Grass_, and
he has supplied his own title, _President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn_, to a
poem which, in my Prefatory Notice, is named (by myself) _Nocturn for the
Death of Lincoln_. All admirers of his poetry will rejoice to learn that
there is no longer any doubt of his adding to his next edition "a brief
cluster of pieces born of thoughts on the deep themes of Death and
Immortality. " A new American edition will be dear to many: a complete
English edition ought to be an early demand of English poetic readers, and
would be the right and crowning result of the present Selection.

W. M.