Chapter 16
He puts things in their attitudes; He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love; He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.
He is the answerer; What can be answered he answers--and what cannot be answered, he shows how it cannot be answered.
3.
A man is a summons and challenge; (It is vain to skulk--Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical echoes?)
Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down, seeking to give satisfaction; He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.
Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely, by day or by night; He has the pass-key of hearts--to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs.
His welcome is universal--the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is; The person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.
Every existence has its idiom--everything has an idiom and tongue; He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also; One part does not counteract another part--he is the joiner--he sees how they join.
He says indifferently and alike, "_How are you, friend_?" to the President at his levee, And he says, "_Good-day, my brother_!" to Cudge that hoes in the sugar- field, And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.
He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol, He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to another, "_Here is our equal, appearing and new_."
4.
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has followed the sea, And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, And the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love them; No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it, No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.
The English believe he comes of their English stock, A Jew to the Jew he seems--a Russ to the Russ--usual and near, removed from none.
Whoever he looks at in the travellers' coffee-house claims him; The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and the island Cuban is sure; The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him.
The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood; The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him--he strangely transmutes them, They are not vile any more--they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.
_BURIAL._
1.
To think of it! To think of time--of all that retrospection! To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! Have you guessed you yourself would not continue? Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? Have you feared the future would be nothing to you?
Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.
To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive! that everything was alive! To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part! To think that we are now here, and bear our part!
2.
Not a day passes--not a minute or second, without an accouchement! Not a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse!
The dull nights go over, and the dull days also, The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over, The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look for an answer, The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for; Medicines stand unused on the shelf--(the camphor-smell has long pervaded the rooms,) The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases, The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, It is palpable as the living are palpable.
The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, But without eyesight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse.
3.
To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and the fruits ripen, and act upon others as upon us now--yet not act upon us! To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them--and we taking--no interest in them!
To think how eager we are in building our houses! To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent! I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most, I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.
Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth--they never cease-- they are the burial lines; He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried.
4.
Gold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf--posh and ice in the river, half- frozen mud in the streets, a grey discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of Twelfth-month, A hearse and stages--other vehicles give place--the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is passed, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, The coffin is passed out, lowered, and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in, The mound above is flattened with the spades--silence, A minute, no one moves or speaks--it is done, He is decently put away--is there anything more?
He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, died, aged forty- one years--and that was his funeral.
Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night; To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers--and he there takes no interest in them!
5.
The markets, the government, the working-man's wages--to think what account they are through our nights and days! To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them-- yet we make little or no account!
The vulgar and the refined--what you call sin, and what you call goodness-- to think how wide a difference! To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference.
To think how much pleasure there is! Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems? Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family? Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares? These also flow onward to others--you and I fly onward, But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.
Your farm, profits, crops,--to think how engrossed you are! To think there will still be farms, profits, crops--yet for you, of what avail?
6.
What will be will be well--for what is is well; To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.
The sky continues beautiful, The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men, nor the pleasure from poems; The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses--these are not phantasms--they have weight, form, location; Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms; The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, The earth is not an echo--man and his life, and all the things of his life, are well-considered.
You are not thrown to the winds--you gather certainly and safely around yourself; Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, for ever and ever!
7.
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father--it is to identify you; It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided; Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you, You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is systematic.
The preparations have every one been justified, The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments--the baton has given the signal.
The guest that was coming--he waited long, for reasons--he is now housed; He is one of those who are beautiful and happy--he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.
The law of the past cannot be eluded, The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, The law of the living cannot be eluded--it is eternal; The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded, The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded, The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons--not one iota thereof can be eluded.
8.
Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth, Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the Atlantic side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all over the earth.
The great masters and kosmos are well as they go--the heroes and good-doers are well, The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and distinguished, may be well, But there is more account than that--there is strict account of all.
The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing, The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing, The common people of Europe are not nothing--the American aborigines are not nothing, The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing--the murderer or mean person is not nothing, The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go, The lowest prostitute is not nothing--the mocker of religion is not nothing as he goes.
9.
I shall go with the rest--we have satisfaction, I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed, I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law, And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law, For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.
And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed, and that there is no life without satisfaction; What is the earth? what are Body and Soul without satisfaction?
I shall go with the rest, We cannot be stopped at a given point--that is no satisfaction, To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space of time--that is no satisfaction, We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time. If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung, If maggots and rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betrayed! Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now: Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?
10.
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk: Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good; The whole universe indicates that it is good, The past and the present indicate that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my Soul! How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it! What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect, The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids are perfect; Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they yet pass on.
My Soul! if I realise you, I have satisfaction; Animals and vegetables! if I realise you, I have satisfaction; Laws of the earth and air! if I realise you, I have satisfaction.
I cannot define my satisfaction, yet it is so; I cannot define my life, yet it is so.
11.
It comes to me now! I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul! The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it; And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and death are altogether for it!
_THIS COMPOST._
1.
Something startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
2.
O how can the ground not sicken? How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distempered corpses in you? Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day--or perhaps I am deceived; I will run a furrow with my plough--I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath; I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
3.
Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person--Yet behold! The grass covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs, The new-born of animals appear--the calf is dropped from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark-green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk; The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me; That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean for ever and for ever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard--that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every sphere of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
4.
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses, It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
_DESPAIRING CRIES._
1.
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, The sad voice of Death--the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, "_The Sea I am quickly to sail: come tell me, Come tell me where I am speeding--tell me my destination_."
2.
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you; I approach, hear, behold--the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your mute inquiry, "_Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me_." Old age, alarmed, uncertain--A young woman's voice, appealing to me for comfort; A young man's voice, "_Shall I not escape_?"
_THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE_
By the City Dead-House, by the gate, As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangour, I curious pause--for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought; Her corpse they deposit unclaimed, it lies on the damp brick pavement. The divine woman, her body--I see the body--I look on it alone, That house once full of passion and beauty--all else I notice not; Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odours morbific impress me; But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house--that ruin! That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built, Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted--or all the old high-spired cathedrals, That little house alone, more than them all--poor, desperate house! Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul! Unclaimed, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips; Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought of you, Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled! crushed! House of life--erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house! dead even then; Months, years, an echoing, garnished house-but dead, dead, dead!
_TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE._
1.
From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: You are to die--Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you--There is no escape for you.
2.
Softly I lay my right hand upon you--you just feel it; I do not argue--I bend my head close, and half envelop it, I sit quietly by--I remain faithful, I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbour, I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily--that is eternal,-- The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.
The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions! Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence--you smile! You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick, You do not see the medicines--you do not mind the weeping friends--I am with you, I exclude others from you--there is nothing to be commiserated, I do not commiserate--I congratulate you.
_UNNAMED LANDS._
1.
Nations, ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten thousand years before these States; Garnered clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travelled their course, and passed on; What vast-built cities--what orderly republics--what pastoral tribes and nomads; What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others; What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions; What sort of marriage--what costumes--what physiology and phrenology; What of liberty and slavery among them--what they thought of death and the soul; Who were witty and wise--who beautiful and poetic--who brutish and undeveloped; Not a mark, not a record remains,--And yet all remains.
2.
O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing; I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to it, and as all will henceforth belong to it.
Afar they stand--yet near to me they stand, Some with oval countenances, learned and calm, Some naked and savage--Some like huge collections of insects, Some in tents--herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen, Some prowling through woods--Some living peaceably on farms, labouring, reaping, filling barns, Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone? Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone? Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us? Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?
3.
I believe, of all those billions of men and women that filled the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinned, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me; Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world--counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world; I suspect I shall meet them there, I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.
_SIMILITUDE._
1.
On the beach at night alone, As the old Mother sways her to and fro, singing her savage and husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining--I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.
2.
A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, All distances of place, however wide, All distances of time--all inanimate forms, All Souls--all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes--the fishes, the brutes, All men and women--me also; All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, languages; All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe; All lives and deaths--all of the past, present, future; This vast similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall for ever span them, and compactly hold them.
_THE SQUARE DEIFIC._
GOD.
Chanting the Square Deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides; Out of the old and new--out of the square entirely divine, Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)--From this side JEHOVAH am I, Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; Not Time affects me--I am Time, modern as any; Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments; As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws, Aged beyond computation--yet ever new--ever with those mighty laws rolling, Relentless, I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man's life; Therefore let none expect mercy--Have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days, mercy?--No more have I; But as the seasons, and gravitation--and as all the appointed days, that forgive not, I dispense from this side judgments inexorable, without the least remorse.
SAVIOUR.