Poets, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
Do you see, O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal
life, it is happiness.[175]
With an enigmatical farewell, he resumes his place in the life of the
world, awaiting such of his readers as belong to him:--
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.[176]
The other poems are pendants to the first, offering further
exemplifications of the precepts of the preface. He appeals, for
example,[177] to his fellow workmen and workwomen, that they realise
their own greatness and immortality, their own individual destiny; for
nothing can ever be so worthy of their reverence as their own soul.
He bids them employ and enjoy this hour to the full,[178] for death
comes, and it will not be the same as life. Yet death also will be good
to the soul--all the signs assure the soul that it will be satisfied;
and there is nothing which does not share in the soul-life.
In dreams[179] he recognises some free utterances of the soul, and in
sleep, the great equaliser of men. As he watches them asleep all become
beautiful to him with the beauty of the soul, which men also call
Heaven. Diseased or vile they may be, but their souls forever urge them
along the appointed way towards the goal. He seems to see all souls
meeting together in sleep, mysteriously to circle the earth, hand in
hand. He entrusts himself to sleep with the same security as to Death
and Birth.
At the sight and touch of the human body,[180] he kindles with the
delight of a Renaissance painter, a Botticelli or a Michael Angelo. The
very soul loves the flesh, and the contact of flesh with flesh rejoices
it. He writes of the magic force of attraction embodied in a woman; nor
of attraction only, but of emancipation. He extols the strength and
joy which is embodied in a man. The body of every man and woman, says
he, should be as sacred to you as your own, for the body is almost the
soul, and to desecrate the bodies of the dead is a little thing beside
the shame that we put upon the bodies of the living.
If life and the soul are sacred, the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man, is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibred body,
Is beautiful as the most beautiful face.[181]
He fills a page[182] with quick Hogarthian sketches of the lower types
of faces, and then, turning about, acclaims the souls behind them as
his equals. They too will duly come to themselves, following towards
the light, after the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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