Book XV: A Song for Occupations

A song for occupations!In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I findthe developments,And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen!Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out ofme, what would it amount to?Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,what would it amount to?Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learn’d, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,A man like me and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master I,I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have myown whoever enjoys me,I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.

If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in thesame shop,If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand asgood as your brother or dearest friend,If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must bepersonally as welcome,If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you think Icannot remember my own foolish and outlaw’d deeds?If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, whyI often meet strangers in the street and love them.

Why what have you thought of yourself?Is it you then that thought yourself less?Is it you that thought the President greater than you?Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

(Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief,Or that you are diseas’d, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and neversaw your name in print,Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,untouchable and untouching,It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whetheryou are alive or no,I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,And all else behind or through them.

The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.

Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.

I bring what you much need yet always have,Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, butoffer the value itself.

There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussionand print,It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than yourhearing and sight are from you,It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.

You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it there,Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasurydepartment, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accountsof stock.

The sun and stars that float in the open air,The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them issomething grand,I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation orbon-mot or reconnoissance,And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us,and without luck must be a failure for us,And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, thegreed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wondersthat fill each minute of time forever,What have you reckon’d them for, camerado?Have you reckon’d them for your trade or farm-work? or for theprofits of your store?Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure,or a lady’s leisure?

Have you reckon’d that the landscape took substance and form that itmight be painted in a picture?Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinationsand the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, oragriculture itself?

Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, andthe practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,I rate them as high as the highest--then a child born of a woman andman I rate beyond all rate.

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,I am this day just as much in love with them as you,Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth.

We consider bibles and religions divine--I do not say they are not divine,I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,than they are shed out of you.

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you whoare here for him,The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, thegoing and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you.

List close my scholars dear,Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the recordsreach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays wouldbe vacuums.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines ofthe arches and cornices?)

Will the whole come back then?Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? isthere nothing greater or more?Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul?

Strange and hard that paradox true I give,Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.

In that and them the heft of the heaviest--in that and them far morethan you estimated, (and far less also,)In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things,regardless of estimation,In them the development good--in them all themes, hints, possibilities.

I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, I do not adviseyou to stop,I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to.

Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not foranother hour but this hour,Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,nighest neighbor--woman in mother, sister, wife,The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divineand strong life,And all else giving place to men and women like you.When the psalm sings instead of the singer,