Notes for Select Whitman Poems

I MET a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidólons. / Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, That of eidólons. / Ever the dim beginning, Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) Eidólons! eidólon [...]

TO thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,) These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee. / (A war O soldiers not for itself alone, Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.) / Thou orb of many orbs [...]

1 A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense. / Farewell my brethren, Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters, My time has ended, my term has come. / Along the northern coast, Just back from the rock-bound shore and the [...]

1 COME said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. / In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection. / By every life a share or more or less, None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is waiting. 2 Lo! keen-eyed towering science, As from tall peaks the modern overlooking, Successive absolute fiats issui [...]

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull, A motionless still balance in the air, then [...]

( 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 contain'd 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 God's serenest purest sky, This film of Satan's seething pit, This heart's geography's map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; [...]

A NEWER garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed—freedom's and law's and thrift's society, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations, To justify the past.

A BATTER'D, wreck'd old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death, I take my way along the island's edge, Venting a heavy heart. / I am too full of woe! Haply I may not live another day; I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep, Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee, Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee [...]

1 THOU Mother with thy equal brood, Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only, A special song before I go I'd sing o'er all the rest, For thee, the future. / I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality, I'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul, I'd show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd. / The paths to the house I seek to make, But leave to those to come the house itself. / Belief I sing, and preparation [...]

THEE for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front, Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants [...]

AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, I sit by the form in the coffin, I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;) To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me t [...]

My city's fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves.

With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all et [...]

A song, a poem of itself—the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up; Yonnondio—I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight, (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls! No picture, poe [...]

The touch of flame—the illuminating fire—the loftiest look at last, O'er city, passion, sea—o'er prairie, mountain, wood—the earth itself; The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight, Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences; The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad: So much i' the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence we scan, Bro't out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before; The lights i [...]

AH, whispering, something again, unseen, Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door, Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat; Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art, (Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest—and this is of them,) So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on my fac [...]

WHEN his hour for death had come, He slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor, Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist, Call'd for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,) Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting a moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to th [...]

GOOD-BYE my Fancy! Farewell dear mate, dear love! I'm going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Good-bye my Fancy. / Now for my last—let me look back a moment; The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping. / Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together; Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy. / Yet let me not be too hasty, Long indeed have w [...]