Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the contradiction—freedom is
necessary. If you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say,
Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever
wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls
Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. And though nothing is more
disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and
the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a
“Declaration of Independence,” or the statute right to vote, by those who
have never dared to think or to act, yet it is wholesome to man to look,
not at Fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other. His sound
relation to these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them.
“Look not on nature, for her name is fatal,” said the oracle. The too much
contemplation of these limits induces meanness. They who talk much of
destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and
invite the evils they fear.
I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud believers in Destiny.
They conspire with it; a loving resignation is with the event. But the
dogma makes a different impression, when it is held by the weak and lazy.
’Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of
Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. Rude and
invincible except by themselves are the elements. So let man be. Let him
empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by manners
and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him hold his purpose as with the tug
of gravitation. No power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up
his point. A man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or
a mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the expansion, and the
resistance of these.
’Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Go face the fire at
sea, or the cholera in your friend’s house, or the burglar in your own, or
what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the
cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at
least, for your good.
For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can confront
fate with fate. If the Universe have these savage accidents, our atoms are
as savage in resistance. We should be crushed by the atmosphere, but for
the reaction of the air within the body. A tube made of a film of glass
can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the same water. If
there be omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of recoil.
But Fate against Fate is only parrying and defense: there are, also, the
noble creative forces. The revelation of Thought takes man out of
servitude into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, we were born, and
afterward we were born again, and many times. We have successive
experiences so important, that the new forgets the old, and hence the
mythology of the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, the great day
of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to the Unity
in things, to the omnipresence of law—sees that what is must be, and
ought to be, or is the best. This beatitude dips from on high down to us,
and we see. It is not in us so much as we are in it. If the air come to
our lungs, we breathe and live; if not, we die. If the light come to our
eyes, we see; else not. And if truth come to our mind, we suddenly expand
to its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as lawgivers; we speak
for Nature; we prophesy and divine.
This insight throws us on the party and interest of the Universe, against
all and sundry; against ourselves, as much as others. A man speaking from
insight affirms of himself what is true of the mind: seeing its
immortality, he says, I am immortal; seeing its invincibility, he says, I
am strong. It is not in us, but we are in it. It is of the maker, not of
what is made. All things are touched and changed by it. This uses, and is
not used. It distances those who share it, from those who share it not.
Those who share it not are flocks and herds. It dates from itself; not
from former men or better men—gospel, or constitution, or college, or
custom. Where it shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things
make a musical or pictorial impression. The world of men show like a
comedy without laughter:—populations, interests, government,
history;—’tis all toy figures in a toy house. It does not overvalue
particular truths. We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an
intellectual man. But, in his presence, our own mind is roused to
activity, and we forget very fast what he says, much more interested in
the new play of our own thought, than in any thought of his. ’Tis the
majesty into which we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn
of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. Once we were stepping a
little this way, and a little that way; now, we are as men in a balloon,
and do not think so much of the point we have left, or the point we would
make, as of the liberty and glory of the way.
Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic power. He who sees
through the design, presides over it, and must will that which must be. We
sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. Our
thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not
to be separated from thought, and not to be separated from will. They must
always have coexisted. It apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead,
which refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will
of all mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the soul itself
which constitutes them men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in
the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which
carries with it all atoms which rise to that height; but I see that, when
souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and
motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the
universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the
air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows
the worlds into order and orbit.
Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the mind up into a
sphere where all is plastic. Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he
whose thought is deepest will be the strongest character. Always one man
more than another represents the will of Divine Providence to the period.
If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of
spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed. Yet we can see that with the
perception of truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. That
affection is essential to will. Moreover, when a strong will appears, it
usually results from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole
energy of body and mind flowed in one direction. All great force is real
and elemental. There is no manufacturing a strong will. There must be a
pound to balance a pound. Where power is shown in will, it must rest on
the universal force. Alaric and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a
truth, or their will can be bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for
any finite will. But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite
force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience of the
moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse
from that heart is an oath from the Most High. I know not what the word
sublime means, if it be not the intimations in this infant of a terrific
force. A text of heroism, a name and anecdote of courage, are not
arguments, but sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse of the
Persian Hafiz, “’Tis written on the gate of Heaven, ‘Woe unto him who
suffers himself to be betrayed by Fate!’” Does the reading of history make
us fatalists? What courage does not the opposite opinion show! A little
whim of will to be free gallantly contending against the universe of
chemistry.
But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Perception is cold, and
goodness dies in wishes; as Voltaire said, ’tis the misfortune of worthy
people that they are cowards; “un des plus grands malheurs des honnêtes
gens c’est qu’ils sont des lâches.” There must be a fusion of these two
to generate the energy of will. There can be no driving force, except
through the conversion of the man into his will, making him the will, and
the will him. And one may say boldly, that no man has a right perception
of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be
its martyr.
The one serious and formidable thing in nature is a will. Society is
servile from want of will, and therefore the world wants saviours and
religions. One way is right to go: the hero sees it, and moves on that
aim, and has the world under him for root and support. He is to others as
the world. His approbation is honor; his dissent, infamy. The glance of
his eye has the force of sunbeams. A personal influence towers up in
memory only worthy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate,
gravitation, and the rest of Fate.
We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is the meter of the
growing man. We can stand against Fate, as children stand up against the
wall in their father’s house, and notch their height from year to year.
But when the boy grows to man, and is master of the house, he pulls down
that wall, and builds a new and bigger. ’Tis only a question of time.
Every brave youth is in training to ride, and rule this dragon. His
science is to make weapons and wings of these passions and retarding
forces. Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, we are
permitted to believe in unity? The bulk of mankind believe in two gods.
They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in
social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion: but in
mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they
think they come under another; and that it would be a practical blunder
to transfer the method and way of working of one sphere into the other.
What good, honest, generous men at home, will be wolves and foxes on
change! What pious men in the parlor will vote for what reprobates at the
polls! To a certain point, they believe themselves the care of a
Providence. But in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a
malignant energy rules.
But relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but
everywhere and always. The divine order does not stop where their sight
stops. The friendly power works on the same rules, in the next farm and
the next planet. But where they have not experience, they run against it,
and hurt themselves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under
the fire of thought—for causes which are unpenetrated.
But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by
intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water
drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your
bark, and the wave which drowned it will be cloven by it, and carry it,
like its own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is inconsiderate of
persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. But learn to
skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The
cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men
of time. Cold and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature
cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in
yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All the
bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more than Mexicos—the secrets of
water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the
chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon, are awaiting you.
The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of war; but right
drainage destroys typhus. The plague in the sea-service from scurvy is
healed by lemon juice and other diets portable or procurable; the
depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended by drainage and
vaccination; and every other pest is not less in the chain of cause and
effect, and may be fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it
commonly extorts some benefits from the vanquished enemy. The mischievous
torrent is taught to drudge for man; the wild beasts he makes useful for
food, or dress, or labor; the chemic explosions are controlled like his
watch. These are now the steeds on which he rides. Man moves in all modes,
by legs of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by
electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own
element. There is nothing he will not make his carrier.
Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. Every pot made
by any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the
enemy, lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But the
Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves that where was
power was not devil, but was God; that it must be availed of, and not by
any means let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so
handily? he was the workman they were in search of. He could be used to
lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far more reluctant and
dangerous, namely, cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance
of water, machinery, and the labors of all men in the world; and time he
shall lengthen, and shorten space.
It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of
the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to
dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of
society—a layer of soldiers; over that, a layer of lords; and a king on
the top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But,
sometimes, the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and
rive every mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics,
believing in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it (as
justice satisfies everybody), through a different disposition of
society,—grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain,—they have contrived to make of this terror the most harmless
and energetic form of a State.
Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. Who likes to have a
dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes? Who likes to believe that
he has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of a Saxon or
Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him down—with what grandeur of
hope and resolve he is fired—into a selfish, huckstering, servile,
dodging animal? A learned physician tells us, the fact is invariable with
the Neapolitan that, when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmistakable
scoundrel. That is a little overstated—but may pass.
But these are magazines and arsenals. A man must thank his defects, and
stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so
largely on his forces, as to lame him; a defect pays him revenues on the
other side. The sufferance, which is the badge of the Jew, has made him,
in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore and
quarry, if evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that shall
be, if calamities, oppositions, and weights are wings and means—we are
reconciled.
Fate involves the melioration. No statement of the universe can have any
soundness, which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the
whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in proportion to the
health. Behind every individual closes organization: before him opens
liberty—the better, the best. The first and worst races are dead. The
second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of
higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new
perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are
certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation of the will
from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is the
end and aim of this world. Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint; and
where his endeavors do not yet fully avail, they tell as tendency. The
whole circle of animal life,—tooth against tooth,—devouring war, war for
food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole
menagerie, the whole chemical mass, is mellowed and refined for higher
use—pleases at a sufficient perspective.
But to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom into fate, observe
how far the roots of every creature run, or find, if you can, a point
where there is no thread of connection. Our life is consentaneous and
far-related. This knot of nature is so well tied, that nobody was ever
cunning enough to find the two ends. Nature is intricate, overlapped,
inter-weaved, and endless. Christopher Wren said of the beautiful King’s
College chapel, “that, if anybody would tell him where to lay the first
stone, he would build such another.” But where shall we find the first
atom in this house of man, which is all consent, inosculation, and balance
of parts?
The web of relation is shown in habitat, shown in hibernation. When
hibernation was observed, it was found, that, whilst some animals become
torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer: hibernation then was a
false name. The long sleep is not an effect of cold, but is regulated by
the supply of food proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when the fruit
or prey it lives on is not in season, and regains its activity when its
food is ready.
Eyes are found in light; ears in auricular air; feet on land; fins in
water; wings in air; and each creature where it was meant to be, with a
mutual fitness. Every zone has its own Fauna. There is adjustment
between the animal and its food, its parasite, its enemy. Balances are
kept. It is not allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The like
adjustments exist for man. His food is cooked when he arrives; his coal in
the pit; the house ventilated; the mud of the deluge dried; his companions
arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him with love, concert, laughter,
and tears. These are coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less.
There are more belongings to every creature than his air and his food. His
instincts must be met, and he has predisposing power that bends and fits
what is near him to his use. He is not possible until the invisible things
are right for him, as well as the visible. Of what changes, then, in sky
and earth, and in finer skies and earths, does the appearance of some
Dante or Columbus apprise us!
How is this effected? Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way
to her ends. As the general says to his soldiers, “If you want a fort,
build a fort,” so nature makes every creature do its own work and get its
living—is it planet, animal, or tree. The planet makes itself. The animal
cell makes itself; then, what it wants. Every creature—wren or
dragon—shall make its own lair. As soon as there is life, there is
self-direction, and absorbing and using of material. Life is freedom—life
in the direct ratio of its amount. You may be sure, the new-born man is
not inert. Life works both voluntarily and supernaturally in its
neighborhood. Do you suppose he can be estimated by his weight in pounds,
or that he is contained in his skin—this reaching, radiating, jaculating
fellow? The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, and the papillæ
of a man run out to every star.
When there is something to be done, the world knows how to get it done.
The vegetable eye makes leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need
is; the first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, or nail,
according to the want; the world throws its life into a hero or a
shepherd, and puts him where he is wanted. Dante and Columbus were
Italians in their time: they would be Russians or Americans to-day. Things
ripen, new men come. The adaptation is not capricious. The ulterior aim,
the purpose beyond itself, the correlation by which planets subside and
crystallize, then animate beasts and men, will not stop, but will work
into finer particulars, and from finer to finest.
The secret of the world is, the tie between person and event. Person makes
event and event person. The “times,” “the age,” what is that, but a few
profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the
times?—Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden,
Kossuth, Rothschild, Astor, Brunel, and the rest. The same fitness must be
presumed between a man and the time and event, as between the sexes, or
between a race of animals and the food it eats, or the inferior races it
uses. He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. But the soul
contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the
actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always
granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin.
What each does is proper to him. Events are the children of his body and
mind. We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings—
Alas! till now I had not known,
My guide and fortune’s guide are one.
All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for,—houses, land,
money, luxury, power, fame,—are the self-same thing, with a new gauze or
two of illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles by which men
are made willing to have their heads broke, and are led out solemnly every
morning to parade, the most admirable is this by which we are brought to
believe that events are arbitrary, and independent of actions. At the
conjurer’s we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have
not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties cause and effect.
Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit
of his character. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to
the sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting-rooms, soldiers
to the frontier. Thus events grow on the same stem with persons; are
sub-persons. The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it,
and not according to the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. We know
what madness belongs to love—what power to paint a vile object in hues of
heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, and other
accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd
acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to
strange company and work. Each creature puts forth from itself its own
condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the
pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and
the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as
brave as the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of
perspiration—gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and
avarice.
A man’s fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man’s friends are his
magnetisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate; but we
are examples. “Quisque suos patimur manes.” The tendency of every man to
enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that
the efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us
into it; and I have noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his
position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on his
merits.
A man will see his character emitted in the events that seem to meet, but
which exude from and accompany him. Events expand with the character. As
once he found himself among toys, so now he plays a part in colossal
systems, and his growth is declared in his ambition, his companions, and
his performance. He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of
causation—the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into the gap he fills.
Hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and performance,
an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, churches,
ways of living, and society, of that town. If you do not chance to meet
him, all that you see will leave you a little puzzled: if you see him, it
will become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built New Bedford, who
built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and
many another noisy mart. Each of these men, if they were transparent,
would seem to you not so much men, as walking cities, and, wherever you
put them, they would build one.
History is the action and reaction of these two,—Nature and Thought,—two
boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement. Everything is
pusher or pushed: and matter and mind are in perpetual tilt and balance
so. Whilst the man is weak, the earth takes him up. He plants his brain
and affections. By-and-by he will take up the earth, and have his gardens
and vineyards in the beautiful order and productiveness of his thought.
Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of
the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind. If the wall
remain adamant, it accuses the want of thought. To a subtler force, it
will stream into new forms, expressive of the character of the mind.
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous
materials, which have obeyed the will of some man? The granite was
reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. Iron was deep in the
ground, and well combined with stone, but could not hide from his fires.
Wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and sea,
in vain. Here they are, within the reach of every man’s day-labor—what he
wants of them.
The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the
poles or points where it would build. The races of men rise out of the
ground preoccupied with a thought which rules them, and divided into
parties ready armed and angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction.
The quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the Roman, the
Austrian and the American. The men who come on the stage at one period are
all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air. We
are all impressionable, for we are made of them; all impressionable, but
some more than others, and these first express them. This explains the
curious contemporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in
the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all
will announce it a few minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are
the best index of the coming hour. So the great man, that is, the man most
imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man—of a fibre
irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He feels the infinitesimal
attractions. His mind is righter than others, because he yields to a
current so feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised.
The correlation is shown in defects. Möller, in his “Essay on
Architecture,” taught that the building which was fitted accurately to
answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been
intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and
pervasive: that a crudity in the blood will appear in the argument; a hump
in the shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. If his mind could
be seen, the hump would be seen. If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it
will run into his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his
fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as every man is hunted
by his own dæmon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.
So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent,
bilious nature, has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that
fret my leaves. Such an one has curculios, borers, knife-worms: a swindler
ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then a smooth, plausible
gentleman, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
This correlation really existing can be divined. If the threads are there,
thought can follow and show them. Especially when a soul is quick and
docile; as Chaucer sings,—
Or if the soul of proper kind
Be so perfect as men find,
That it wot what is to come,
And that he warneth all and some,
Of every of their aventures,
By previsions or figures;
But that our flesh hath not might
It to understand aright,
For it is warned too darkly.
Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and
presage: they meet the person they seek: what their companion prepares to
say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of
what is about to befall.
Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the design, this
vagabond life admits. We wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year
after year we find two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend
a great part of their best time within a few feet of each other. And the
moral is, that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from
us; as Goethe said, “what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in
old age,” too often cursed with the granting of our prayer; and hence the
high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to
ask only for high things.
One key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, one solution to
the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the
propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride
alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the
equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or
plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the
other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins,
and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and
a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or
is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his
relation to the universe which his ruin benefits. Leaving the dæmon who
suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit
by his pain.
To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this
lesson—namely, that by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which is
throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the
divinity, in some form, to repay. A good intention clothes itself with
sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and
shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.
Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds nature and souls in
perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. I do
not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of
the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies;
that all is and must be pictorial; that the rainbow, and the curve of the
horizon, and the arch of the blue vault, are only results from the
organism of the eye. There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to
admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I
cannot look without seeing splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random
sparkle here or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of
beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central intention of nature
to be harmony and joy.
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we thought men were
free in the sense that in a single exception one fantastical will could
prevail over the law of things, it were all one as if a child’s hand could
pull down the sun. If, in the least particular, one could derange the
order of nature—who would accept the gift of life?
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which secures that all is
made of one piece; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal
and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In astronomy is vast space,
but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day.
Why should we be afraid of nature, which is no other than “philosophy and
theology embodied”? Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements,
we who are made up of the same elements? Let us build to the Beautiful
Necessity, which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger
that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to the Necessity which
rudely or softly educates him to the perception that there are no
contingencies; that Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not
intelligent but intelligence,—not personal nor impersonal,—it disdains
words and passes understanding; it dissolves persons; it vivifies nature,
yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence.
WALT WHITMAN
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
| I |
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) |
| |
| II |
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person,
are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s
stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escap’d youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple.
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town,
the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me. |
| |
| III |
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.
You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lin’d sides! you
distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and
now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and
the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. |
| |
| IV |
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel, do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say, I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me
shall like me.
I think whoever I see must be happy. |
| |
| V |
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me
I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. |
| |
| VI |
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and
all argument against it).
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of
things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
Now I reëxamine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious
clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant
of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls? |
| |
| VII |
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever
provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands
my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts
descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit
as I pass.)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and
pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them
to be free to mine? |
| |
| VIII |
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and
woman
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the
roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself).
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young
and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering, longing ache of contact. |
| |
| IX |
Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and
incomprehensible at first.
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we
cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor
here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it
but a little while. |
| |
| X |
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by
under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.) |
| |
| XI |
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself
to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain
behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate
kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you. |
| |
| XII |
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the
greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitués of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children,
bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each
emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and
well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death. |
| |
| XIII |
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but
it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or
purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the
chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards
and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward where-ever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather
the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon
this globe or any globe, falls
into niches and corners before the procession
of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the
universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it,
or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the
parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom,
everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones,
hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself. |
| |
| XIV |
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any
fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a
greater struggle necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. |
| |
| XV |
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the
judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live? |
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY
| I |
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are
to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are
more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and
more in my meditations, than you might suppose. |
| |
| II |
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, everyone
disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in
the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of
Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see
them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea
of the ebb-tide. |
| |
| III |
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations
hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was
refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet
was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes
of steamboats, I look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with
motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong
shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the
sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine
pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests
and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite
storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on each side
by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and
glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the
tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets. |
| |
| IV |
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same—others who look back on me because I look’d forward
to them
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night). |
| |
| V |
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv’d identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be
I knew I should be of my body. |
| |
| VI |
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw
me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against
me as I sat,
Saw many I lov’d in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told
them a word,
Liv’d the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old rôle, the rôle that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small. |
| |
| VII |
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in
advance,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all
you cannot see me? |
| |
| VIII |
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d
Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated
lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love
call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in
my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then, do we not?
What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is
accomplish’d, is it not? |
| |
| IX |
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and
women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest
name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old rôle, the rôle that is great or small according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking
upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the
hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes
have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or anyone’s head, in the
sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners,
sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red
and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,
Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul. |
A SONG OF JOYS
O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments—full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!
O for the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.
O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing
locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness of the
woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.
O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool gurgling by the ears
and hair.
O the fireman’s joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition,
conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of
generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
O the mother’s joys!
The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded
life.
O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation,
The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.
O to go back to the place where I was born,
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,
To continue and be employ’d there all my life,
The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water,
The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear.
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man;
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice—I
have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon, my brood of
tough boys accompanying me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so
well as they love to be with me.
Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots where they
are sunk with heavy stones (I know the buoys),
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row just before
sunrise toward the buoys,
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are desperate with
their claws as I take them out, I insert wooden pegs in the joints of their
pincers,
I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore,
There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil’d till their color
becomes scarlet.
Another time mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for
miles;
Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the brown-faced
crew;
Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body,
My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils of slender
rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions.
O boat on the rivers,
The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers,
The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and the
raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook supper at
evening.
(O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)
O to work in mines, or forging iron,
Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and shadow’d
space,
The furnace, the hot liquid pour’d out and running.
O to resume the joys of the soldier!
To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer—to feel his sympathy!
To behold his calmness—to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle—to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery—to see the glittering of the bayonets and
musket-barrels in the sun!
To see men fall and die and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood—to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
O the whaleman’s joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
I feel the ship’s motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me,
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There—she blows!
Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest—we descend, wild with
excitement,
I leap in the lower’d boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass, lethargic, basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his vigorous arm;
O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling, running to
windward, tows me,
Again I see him rise to breathe, we now close again,
I see a lance driven through his side, press’d deep, turn’d in the wound,
Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and narrower,
swiftly cutting the water—I see him die,
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls flat and still
in the bloody foam.
O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
O ripen’d joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
How clear is my mind—how all people draw nigh to me!
What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more than the bloom
of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?
O the orator’s joys!
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself, receiving identity through materials
and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them,
My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, reason,
articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which finally
see,
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, embraces,
procreates.
O the farmer’s joys!
Ohioan’s, Illinoisian’s, Wisconsinese’, Kanadian’s, Iowan’s, Kansian’s,
Missourian’s, Oregonese’ joys!
To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.
O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.
O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with
them.
O the joy of a manly self-hood!
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.
Know’st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath’d games?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse, and drinking?
Yet O my soul supreme!
Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow’d yet proud, the suffering and the
struggle?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day or night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres, Time and Space?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal,
perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own, undying one, joys worthy thee, O soul?
O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul
impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
For not life’s joys alone I sing, repeating—the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for
reasons,
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn’d, or render’d to
powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices,
eternal uses of the earth.
O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect
nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!
O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses,
To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!
O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air),
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys. |