NOT THE PILOT' 1867. Nor the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled; Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long, By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination, More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose a march for these States, For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence. 1867. 1 Compare Whitman's Democratic Vistas, in the Complete Prose Works, pp. 197-250; especially pp. 199, 200, 202, 203: Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision. For, I say, the true nationality of the States, the genuine union, when we come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither the written law nor, (as is generally supposed), either self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects -but the fervid and tremendous Idea, melting everything else with resistless heat, and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, emotional power. TEARS TEARS! tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head; O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! 2 This poem is now placed first in the standard editions of Whitman's Poems. In its original form, as the Inscription of the 1867 edition, it read: - SMALL is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest - namely, ONE'S-SELF- that wondrous thing, a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, f sing. Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse; I say the Form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male, I sing. Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak the word of the modern, the word EN-MASSE. My Days I sing, and the Lands with interstice I knew of hapless War. O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey link'd together let us go. This version, in a slightly revised form, beginning Small the theme of my chant,' is now printed as a separate poem in the final edition of Leaves of Grass p. 397. WHISPERS of heavenly death murmur'd I hear, Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, Footsteps gently ascending, ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low, Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing, (Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears ? ) I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing, With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd faroff star, Appearing and disappearing. (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth; On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, 1868. (1871.) THE SINGER IN THE PRISON I O sight of pity, shame and dole! 1 RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison, Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the like whereof was never heard, Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas'd their pacing, Making the hearer's pulses stop for ecstasy and awe. 22 The sun was low in the west one winter day, When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land, 10 sight of shame, and pain, and dole! (1869, 1871.) In the early editions this section begins: O sight of pity, gloom, and dole! O pardon me, a hapless Soul! 3 A soul confined by bars and bands, Ceaseless she paces to and fro, O heart-sick days! O nights of woe! It was not I that sinn'd the sin, Dear prison'd soul bear up a space, Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole! The singer ceas'd, 3 20 30 One glance swept from her clear calm eyes o'er all those upturn'd faces, Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal, seam'd and beauteous faces, Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them, While her gown touch'd them rustling in the silence, She vanish'd with her children in the dusk. 3 In the early editions these stanzas have a sub-title The Hymn,' and each stanza is followed by a refrain, in italics after the first stanza, the same as at the beginning of Section 1; after the second stanza, the same as at the beginning of Section 2; after the third stanza: O life! no life, but bitter dole! O burning, beaten, baffled Soul! While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr'd 41 (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol), A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute, With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow'd and moved to weeping, And youth's convulsive breathings, memories of home, The mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's solitary night, to many, many there, Years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune, the voice, the words, Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle, 50 The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings, O sight of pity, shame and dole! 1 ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLORS WHO are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human, With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet? Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? ('T is while our army lines Carolina's sands and pines, Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com'st to me, As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.) Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder'd, A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught, Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought. No further does she say, but lingering all the day, The early editions have the same variant reading here as in the first line. 1 Compare the passage from Whitman's Prose Work quoted in a note at the end of A Broadway Pageant,' and also, especially (among many other passagss), Speci men Days, July 22 and 23, 1878, Complete Prose Works, pp. 111, 112; and the following paragraphs from the note on Passage to India' in the Preface of the 1873 edition (Complete Prose Works, pp. 272-274); — I am not sure but the last inclosing sublimation of race or poem is, what it thinks of death. After the rest has been comprehended and said, even the grandest after those contributions to mightiest nationality, or to sweetest song, or to the best personalism, male or female, have been glean'd from the rich and varied themes of tangible life, and have been fully accepted and sung, and the pervading fact of visible existence, with the duty it devolves, is rounded and apparently completed, it still remains to be really completed by suffusing through the whole and several, that other pervading invisible fact, so large a part (is it not the largest part?) of life here, combining the rest, and furnishing, for person or State, the only permanent and unitary meaning to all, even the meanest life, consistently with the dignity of the universe, in Time. As from the eligibility to this thought, and the cheerful conquest of this fact, flash forth the first distinctive proofs of the soul, so to me (extending it only a little further), the ultimate Democratic purports, the ethereal and spiritual ones, are to concentrate here, and as fixed stars, radiate hence. For, in my opinion, it is no less than this idea of immortality, above all other ideas, that is to enter into, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to democracy in the New World. [Here follows the paragraph already quoted at the end of note 1 on p. 546; then, after speaking of his own paralysis and his mother's death, Whitman concludes: -] Under these influences, therefore, I still feel to keep -Passage to India' for last words. . . . Not as, in antiquity, at highest festival of Egypt, the noisome skeleton of death was sent on exhibition to the revelers, for zest and shadow to the occasion's joy and light-but as the marble statue of the normal Greeks at Elis, suggesting death in the form of a beautiful and perfect young man, with closed eyes, leaning on an inverted torchemblem of rest and aspiration after action of crown and point which all lives and poems should steadily have reference to, namely, the justified and noble termination of our identity, this grade of it, and outletpreparation to another grade. The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun! O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold! Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams! You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest! You too with joy I sing. Passage to India ! 30 Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first ? The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,2 The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought |