Song
of Myself
By Walt Whitman 1819-1892
1
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
2
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste
of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with
it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised
and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The
smoke of my own breath
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of
my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and
of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The
sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd
to the eddies of the wind
3.
There was never any more inception than there
is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there
is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge
and urge and urge,
Always
the procreant urge of the world
5.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from
your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom
or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice
8.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of
boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating
thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts
of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of
rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside
borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows
and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star
quickly working his passage to the centre of the
crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so
many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall
sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who
hurry home and give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating
here, what howls
restrain'd by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers
made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them--I
come and I depart
52
The
spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab
and my loitering.
I
too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the
world.
The
last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true
as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I
depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway
sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy
jags.
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.
You
will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing
to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.