For Independence Day: “I Hear America Singing”

 

I’ve posted this before, back on March 28th, 2014 as part of my “Daily Whitman” series; but it’s a great poem for the Fourth of July, non-jingoistic and speaking of what makes the American project truly great.  May we continue to emulate it.  Enjoy, and Happy Independence Day.

I Hear America Singing

  I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
  Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
  The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
  The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
  The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
      singing on the steamboat deck,
  The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as
      he stands,
  The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning,
      or at noon intermission or at sundown,
  The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
      or of the girl sewing or washing,
  Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
  The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
      fellows, robust, friendly,
  Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Daily Whitman

Good-Bye My Fancy

  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 we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended
      into one;
  Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,)
  If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens,
  May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something,
  May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who
      knows?)
  May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,
  Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.

The End

Daily Whitman

Unseen Buds

  Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,
  Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,
  Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,
  Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;
  Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,
  (On earth and in the sea—the universe—the stars there in the
      heavens,)
  Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,
  And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

Daily Whitman

Grand is the Seen

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—grand are the sky and stars,
  Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
  And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
  But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
  Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing
      the sea,
  (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what
      amount without thee?)
  More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
  More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.

Daily Whitman

The Unexpress’d

  How dare one say it?
  After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
  Vaunted Ionia's, India's—Homer, Shakspere—the long, long times'
      thick dotted roads, areas,
  The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars—Nature's pulses reap'd,
  All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,
  All ages' plummets dropt to their utmost depths,
  All human lives, throats, wishes, brains—all experiences' utterance;
  After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,
  Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print—something lacking,
  (Who knows? the best yet unexpress'd and lacking.)

 

Daily Whitman

L. of G.’s Purport

 Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable
      masses (even to expose them,)
  But add, fuse, complete, extend—and celebrate the immortal and the good.
  Haughty this song, its words and scope,
  To span vast realms of space and time,
  Evolution—the cumulative—growths and generations.

  Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued,
  Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night
      absorbing,
  Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,
  I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

  I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:
  To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years—
  Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

Daily Whitman

Mirages

  More experiences and sights, stranger, than you'd think for;
  Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,
  Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in
      plain sight,
  Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,
  (Account for it or not—credit or not—it is all true,
  And my mate there could tell you the like—we have often confab'd
      about it,)
  People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,
  Farms and dooryards of home, paths border'd with box, lilacs in corners,
  Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,
  Glum funerals, the crape-veil'd mother and the daughters,
  Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,
  Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,
  Now and then mark'd faces of sorrow or joy,
  (I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)
  Show'd to me—just to the right in the sky-edge,
  Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

 

Daily Whitman

“The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”

  The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas'd,
  The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,
  The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,
  Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute;
  (What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth's
      orbic scheme?)
  Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,
  The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.

 

Daily Whitman

The Commonplace

 The commonplace I sing;
  How cheap is health! how cheap nobility!
  Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;
  The open air I sing, freedom, toleration,
  (Take here the mainest lesson—less from books—less from the schools,)
  The common day and night—the common earth and waters,
  Your farm—your work, trade, occupation,
  The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.

Daily Whitman

A Persian Lesson

For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,
  In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,
  On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,
  Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,
  Spoke to the young priests and students.

  "Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,
  Allah is all, all, all—immanent in every life and object,
  May-be at many and many-a-more removes—yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.

  "Has the estray wander'd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?
  Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?
  Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
  The something never still'd—never entirely gone? the invisible need
      of every seed?

  "It is the central urge in every atom,
  (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)
  To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,
  Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."