Notes for Select Whitman Poems

( To Confront a Portrait. )

1

OUT from behind this bending rough-cut mask,

These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,

This common curtain of the face containd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each,

(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—O heaven!

The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)

This glaze of Gods serenest purest sky,

This film of Satans seething pit,

This hearts geographys map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea;

Out from the convolutions of this globe,

This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,

This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,

Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)

These burind eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,

To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate,

To you whoeer you are—a look.

2

A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,

Of youth long sped and middle age declining,

(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,

Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)

Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,

As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or opend window,

Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,

To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,

Then travel travel on.