"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, List 2

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy

To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them

It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves

Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church,
Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher

Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,
Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any

I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be

Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha

The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious

A call in the midst of the crowd,
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

What I do and say the same waits for them,
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like man leaving charges before a journey.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.

All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,
(What have I to do with lamentation?)

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this
moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck

I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

I am large, I contain multitudes.

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

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.