No More Learning

Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless:
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.


2.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

The way is suspicious--the result uncertain, perhaps destructive;
You would have to give up all else--I alone would expect to be your God,
sole and exclusive;
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around
you, would have to be abandoned;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further--Let go
your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.

Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in the open air,
(For in any roofed room of a house I emerge not--nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill--first watching lest any person,
for miles around, approach unawares--
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some
quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss,
For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.

Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus, merely touching you, is enough--is best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep, and be carried eternally.


3.

But these leaves conning, you con at peril,
For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,
They will elude you at first, and still more afterward--I will certainly
elude you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove
victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only--they will do just as much evil, perhaps
more;
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not
hit--that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me, and depart on your way.



_SINGING IN SPRING. _

These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers:
For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world--but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side--now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked
from the fields, have accumulated,
Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly
cover them--Beyond these I pass,
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence;
Alone, I had thought--yet soon a silent troop gathers around me;
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive--thicker they come, a great
crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens--tossing toward whoever is near me.
Here lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida,
as it hung trailing down,
Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me--and returns again, never to
separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades--this Calamus-
root[1] shall,
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back! )
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I, compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have--giving something to each.
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve;
I will give of it--but only to them that love as I myself am capable of
loving.

[Footnote 1: I am favoured with the following indication, from Mr Whitman
himself, of the relation in which this word Calamus is to be
understood:--"Calamus is the very large and aromatic grass or rush growing
about water-ponds in the valleys--spears about three feet high; often
called Sweet Flag; grows all over the Northern and Middle States. The
_recherche_ or ethereal sense of the term, as used in my book, arises
probably from the actual Calamus presenting the biggest and hardiest kind
of spears of grass, and their fresh, aquatic, pungent _bouquet_. "]



_LOVE OF COMRADES. _


1.

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.


2.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies;
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks;
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.


3.

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, _ma femme_!
For you! for you, I am trilling these songs,
In the love of comrades,
In the high-towering love of comrades.