Section 16

I see ten fishermen waiting—they discover now a thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate—they diverge and row off, each on its round- ing course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers ;
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats—others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs ;
The boats are partly drawn up—the water slaps against them ;
On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.
1 1856. For ‘¢ Wacho”’ reads ‘¢ Guacho.”’ Io
146 LEAVES OF GRASS
!) I see the despondent red man in the west, dingering about the banks of Moingo, and about Lake Pepin ; 150
He has heard the quail and beheld the honey-bee, and sadly prepared to depart.
I see the regions of snow and ice ;
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn ;
I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance ;
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs ;
I see the porpoise-hunters—I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and the North Atlantic ;
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland—lI mark the long winters, and the isolation.
I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them ;
Tam a real Parisian ;*
Iam a habitan of Vienna,’ St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constanti- nople ; 160
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne ;
I am of London,* Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick ;
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence ;
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw—or northward in Chris- tiania or Stockholm—or in Siberian Irkutskt—or in some street in Iceland ;
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
Ke)
I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries ;
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison’d splint, the fetish, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns ;
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia ;
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo ;° 170
1856 reads ‘‘ I am a real Londoner, Parisian, Viennese.?? ‘¢Vienna’’ added in 1860.
“*London” added in 1860.
‘‘orin Siberian Irkutsk’’ added in 1860. % “*Vedo’’ added in 1860.
Cr a aC
SALUT AU MONDE 147
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee- man in their huts ;
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo ;
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat ;
I see Teheran—I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see the caravans toiling onward ;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians—I see the pyramids and obelisks ;
I look on chisel’d histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks ;
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm’d, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries ;
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side- drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.
I see the menials of the earth, laboring ;
I see the prisoners in the prisons ; 180
I see the defective human bodies of the earth ;
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics ;
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth ;
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere ;
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs ;
I see the constructiveness of my race ;
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race ;
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I go among them —I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth. 190
II
You, whoever you are !"
You daughter or son of England !?
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia !
You dim-descended, black, divine soul’d African, large, fine- headed, nobly-form’d, superbly destin’d, on equal terms with me!
1 1856 reads ‘‘ You, inevitable where you are!’ 1860 ’67 read ‘You,
where you are !’’ ‘ 2 After line 192, 1856 reads ‘‘ You freer man of Australia! you of Tasmania ! you of Papua ! You free woman of the same !’’
148 LEAVES OF GRASS
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian !
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese !
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!
‘You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbor of the Danube! 200
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian ! Bulgarian !
You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus !
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding !
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shoot- ing arrows to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tar- tary !
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks !
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on Syrian ground ! 210
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah !
You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Eu- phrates! you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat !
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca !
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb, ruling your families and tribes !
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Da- mascus, or Lake Tiberias !
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo !
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indiffer- ent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea !
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me! 220
And you, each and’ everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the same !
1 «
SALUT AU MONDE 149 Health to you! Good will to you all—from me and America sent."
Each of us inevitable ;
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth ; :
Each of us allow’d the eternal purports’ of the earth ;
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
12
You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-hair’d hordes !*
You own’d persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops !*
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive counte- nances of brutes!
I dare not refuse you—the scope of the world, and of time and space, are upon me.° 230
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality !
You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, Cali- fornia !
You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp !
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovel- ling, seeking your food !
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese !
You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d, Bedowee !
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You bather bathing in the Ganges !
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you
Fejee-man ! You peon of Mexico !® you slave’ of Carolina, Texas, Ten- nessee ! 240 I do not prefer others so very much before you either ; 1 1856 reads ‘I salute you for myself and for Amercia.’’ 1860, after line
222, adds ‘‘ For we acknowledge you all and each,’’ 2 1856’60, For ‘‘ purports’? read ‘¢ purport.’’ 3 1856 ’60 add ‘‘ you white or black owners of slaves.’’ 4 After line 228, 1856 reads ‘‘ You felons, deformed persons, idiots !’’ 5 Line 230 added in 1867. 6 1856 ’60 add ‘‘ you Russian serf !”’ 7 1856. For ‘‘slave’’ reads ‘‘ quadroon,”’
150 LEAVES OF GRASS
I do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand ; (You will come forward in due time to my side. )'
My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth ;
I have look’d for equals and lovers,’ and found them ready for me in all lands ;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.’
13 O vapors! I think I have risen with you,* and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons ; I think I have blown with you, O winds ;° O waters,® I have finger’d every shore with you.
I have’ run though what any river or strait of the globe has run through ; 250
I have® taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the high® embedded rocks, to cry thence.
Salut au monde /”
What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself ;
All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself.”
Toward all,”
I raise high the perpendicular hand—I make the signal, To remain after me in sight forever,
For all the haunts and homes of men.
1 1856. For lines 241, 2, 3 read “I do not refuse you my hand, or prefer others before you, I de not say one word against you.’ 2 1856 reads ‘*I have looked for Pa, sisters, lovers, and found,”? etc. Line 246 added in 1860. 1856 reads ‘‘ I think I have risen with you, you vapors, 2seLo: 1856. For ‘‘O winds’’ reads ‘¢ you winds.’ 1856 reads ‘‘I think you waters I have fingered,’’ etc 1856 reads “I think I have run,”’ etc. 1856 reads ‘* I think Ihave taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on embedded rocks.’ 9 1860 reads ‘‘on the nied embedded rocks, to cry hence.’’ 10 Line 252 added in 1860. ok After line 254, 1856 reads ‘‘I find my home wherever there are homes of men. @ Lines 255 to end added in 1860,
AO Fw
8
SALUT AU MONDE I51
A CHILD’S AMAZE. First published in ‘Drum Taps,’’ 1865.
SILENT and amazed, even when a little boy,
I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,
As contending against some being or influence.
&
THE RUNNER. First published in 1867.
On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner ; He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs ; He is thinly clothed—he leans forward as he runs, With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais’d.
&
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. First published in 1860.
WoMEN sit, or move to and fro—some old, some young ; The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than
the young. &
MOTHER AND BABE.
First published in “‘ Drum Taps,” 1865.
I sex the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother ; The sleeping mother and babe—hush’d, I study them long and
long. &
THOUGHT.
First published in 1860.
Or obedience, faith, adhesiveness ; As I stand aloof and look, there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men, following the lead of
those who do not believe in men.
152 LEAVES OF GRASS
AMERICAN FEUILLAGE.
First published in 1860.
AMERICA always !"
Always our own feuillage !
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath’d Cuba !
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western Seas ;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of square miles ;
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings—Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches ;
Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of
Democracy ! Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows ; Io
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes ;
Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the habitans, friendly, threatening, iron- ical, scorning invaders ;
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering ;
On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steam- boats wooding up ;
1 1860. After line 1 reads ‘‘ Always me joined with you, whoever you are !’”
AMERICAN FEUILLAGE 153
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the val- leys of the Roanoke and Delaware ;
In their northerly wilds, beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink ;
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently ;
In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done— they rest standing—they are too tired ; 20
Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around ;
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes ;
White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes ;
On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike mid- night together ;
In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk ;
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake—in sum- mer visible: through the clear waters, the great trout swimming ;
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree
_ tops,
Below, the red cedar, festoon’d with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat ;
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, para- sites, with color’d flowers and berries, enveloping huge
trees The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noise- lessly waved by the wind ; 30
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding
from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore- trees—the flames—with the black smoke from the pitch- pine, curling and rising ;
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Caro- lina’s coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the
154 LEAVES OF GRASS
large sweep-seines—the windlasses on shore work’d by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing-houses ;
Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine’ dropping from the incisions in the trees—-There are the turpentine works,’
There are the negroes at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is cover’d with pine straw :
—In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking ;
In Virginia, the planter’s son returning after a long absence, joy- fully welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse ;
On rivers, boatmen safely moor’d at night-fall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talk- ing ; 40
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp—there are the green- ish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cy- press tree, and the juniper tree ;
—wNorthward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the mus- ket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women ;
Children at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep !)
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mis- sissippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around ;
California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume —the stanch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse- path ;
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—drivers driv- ing mules or oxen before rude carts—cotton bales piled on banks and wharves ;
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres —one Love, one Dilation or Pride ;
—In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines— the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and in- dorsement,
1 1860 reads ‘turpentine and tar.’’ ® 1860 reads ‘‘ There is the turpentine distillery.”
AMERICAN FEUILLAGE 155
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth,
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, 50
The setting out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march,
The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies ;
—All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These States —reminiscences, all institutions,
All These States, compact—Every square mile of These States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also,
Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s fields,
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air ;
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall traveler southward, but returning northward early in the spring ;
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the road-side ;
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco,
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; 60