Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.I loafe and invite my soul,I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and theirparents the same,I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,Hoping to cease not till death.

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,Nature without check with original energy.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d theearth much?Have you practised so long to learn to read?Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the originof all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there aremillions of suns left),You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor lookthrough the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

A child said, “What is the grass?” fetching it to me with full hands;How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any morethan he.I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful greenstuff woven.Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,Bearing the owner’s name some way in the corners,that we may see and remark, and say,“Whose?”

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side.The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkleand scud,My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously fromthe deck.The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body andbruis’d feet,And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him somecoarse clean clothes,And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,I had him sit next me at table, my firelock lean’d in the corner.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,The courage of present times and all times,How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship,and Death chasing it up and down the storm,How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful ofdays and faithful of nights,And chalked in large letters on a board, “Be of good cheer, we willnot desert you”;How he followed with them and tack’d with them three days and wouldnot give it up,How he saved the drifting company at last,How the lank loose-gown’d women looked when boated from the sideof their prepared graves,How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and thesharp-lipp’d unshaved men;All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,I am the man, I suffered, I was there.The disdain and calmness of martyrs,The mother of old, condemned for a witch, burned with dry wood, herchildren gazing on,The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing,covered with sweat.I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with theooze of my skin,I fall on the weeds and stones,The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head withwhip-stocks.Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confoundsthe learning of all times,And there is no trade or employment but the young man followingit may become a hero,And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’duniverse.And I say to any man or woman, “Let your soul stand cool and composedbefore a million universes.”

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and eachmoment then,In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face inthe glass,I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one issign’d by God’s name,And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,Others will punctually come forever and ever.

Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening.(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minutelonger.)Who has done his day’s work? Who will soonest be through withhis supper?Who wishes to walk with me?

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.