THE PORTABLE WALT WHITMAN Walt Whitman (1819–1892) Was Born on Long Island and Edu- Cated in Brooklyn, New York
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penguin classics THE PORTABLE WALT WHITMAN walt whitman (1819–1892) was born on Long Island and edu- cated in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a printer’s devil, jour- neyman compositor, and itinerant schoolteacher, edited the Long Islander, and in 1846 became editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, a po- sition from which he was discharged for political reasons. After a period in New Orleans, he returned to Brooklyn and became prominent among the bohemian element of New York. In 1855 he published Leaves of Grass, which he continued to revise and re- publish over his lifetime. The Civil War found him working as an unofficial nurse to Northern and Southern soldiers in army hos- pitals in Washington, D.C. After the war he became a clerk in the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior, from which he was shortly dismissed by the Secretary, who regarded Leaves of Grass as an immoral book. He lived in Camden, New Jersey, dur- ing his last nineteen years. He was particularly in the public eye during these years, when such English writers as William Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, J. A. Symonds, and Robert Steven- son contended that Americans did not fully appreciate him. michael warner is professor of English at Rutgers University. His most recent works include Publics and Counterpublics (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Zone Books, 2002), The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: The Free Press, 1999), and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King (New York: Library of America, 1999). He is also the author of The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); the editor of Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); the editor, with Myra Jehlen, of The English Literatures of America, 1500–1800 (New York: Routledge, 1997) and, with Gerald Graff, of The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A Documentary Anthology (New York: Routledge, 1988). His essays and journalism have appeared in The Village Voice, VLS, The Nation, The Advocate, POZ, In These Times, and other magazines. He lives in New York. The Portable Walt Whitman Edited with an Introduction by michael warner penguin books PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in Penguin Books 2004 Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2004 All rights reserved library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892. [Selections. 2003] The portable Walt Whitman / Walt Whitman; edited with an introduction by Michael Warner. p. cm. — (Penguin classics) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4406-1528-3 I. Warner, Michael, 1958– II. Title. III. Series. PS3203.W38 2003 811'.3—dc21 2003048734 Set in Adobe Sabon Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Contents Introduction xi POEMS FROM LEAVES OF GRASS [dates indicate first book publication] 1855: Song of Myself 3 A Song for Occupations 68 To Think of Time 77 The Sleepers 84 I Sing the Body Electric 94 Faces 103 There Was a Child Went Forth 108 Who Learns My Lesson Complete? 111 1856: Unfolded Out of the Folds 113 Song of the Broad-Axe 114 To You 126 This Compost 129 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 132 Song of the Open Road 139 A Woman Waits for Me 151 To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire 153 vi contents Spontaneous Me 155 A Song of the Rolling Earth 158 1860: Starting from Paumanok 165 From Pent-up Aching Rivers 179 Me Imperturbe 182 I Hear America Singing 183 As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life 184 You Felons on Trial in Courts 188 The World below the Brine 189 I Sit and Look Out 190 All Is Truth 191 Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 192 Native Moments 199 Once I Pass’d through a Populous City 200 Once I Pass’d through a Populous City [draft version] 201 Facing West from California’s Shores 202 As Adam Early in the Morning 203 Live Oak, with Moss 204 I. [Not Heat Flames up and Consumes] 204 II. [I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing] 204 III. [When I Heard at the Close of the Day] 205 IV. [This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful] 206 V. [Calamus 8: “Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me”] 206 VI. [What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?] 207 VII. [Recorders Ages Hence!] 207 VIII. [Calamus 9: “Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted”] 208 contents vii IX. [I Dreamed in a Dream] 209 X. [O You Whom I Often and Silently Come] 209 XI. [Earth! My Likeness] 209 XII. [To a Western Boy] 210 Calamus: In Paths Untrodden 211 Scented Herbage of My Breast 211 Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand 213 For You O Democracy 215 These I Singing in Spring 215 Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances 217 The Base of All Metaphysics [added 1871] 218 Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me? 218 Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone 219 Of Him I Love Day and Night 219 City of Orgies 220 To a Stranger 221 I Hear It Was Charged against Me 221 We Two Boys Together Clinging 221 Here the Frailest Leaves of Me 222 A Glimpse 222 Sometimes with One I Love 222 Among the Multitude 223 That Shadow My Likeness 223 Full of Life Now 223 To Him That Was Crucified 225 To a Common Prostitute 226 To You 227 Mannahatta 228 A Hand-Mirror 230 Visor’d 231 As if a Phantom Caress’d Me 232 So Long! 233 viii contents 1865–66: Drum-Taps [1865] and Sequel to Drum-Taps [1865–66]: Shut Not Your Doors 237 Beat! Beat! Drums! 237 City of Ships 238 Cavalry Crossing a Ford 239 Bivouac on a Mountain Side 239 An Army Corps on the March [1865–66] 240 By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame 240 Come Up from the Fields Father 241 Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night 242 A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown 244 A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim 245 As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods 246 The Wound-Dresser 246 When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer 249 A Farm Picture 250 Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun 250 To a Certain Civilian 252 Years of the Modern 252 Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice 254 As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado [1865–66] 255 Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd 255 I Saw Old General at Bay 256 Look Down Fair Moon 256 Reconciliation [1865–66] 257 When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d [1865–66] 257 O Captain! My Captain! [1865–66] 267 Old War-Dreams [1865–66] 267 contents ix Chanting the Square Deific [1865–66] 268 I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ [1865–66] 270 1867: One’s Self I Sing 271 The Runner 272 When I Read the Book 273 1871: Passage to India 274 Proud Music of the Storm 285 A Noiseless Patient Spider 292 The Last Invocation 293 On the Beach at Night 294 Sparkles from the Wheel 296 Gods 297 Joy, Shipmate, Joy! 298 Ethiopia Saluting the Colors 299 1872: The Mystic Trumpeter 300 1876: Prayer of Columbus 304 To a Locomotive in Winter 307 The Ox-Tamer 309 1881: The Dalliance of the Eagles 310 A Clear Midnight 311 x contents 1888: As I Sit Writing Here 312 Broadway 313 1891: Unseen Buds 314 Good-bye My Fancy! 315 PROSE WRITINGS “The Child’s Champion” 319 Prefaces and Afterwords from Leaves of Grass: Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 330 Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Leaves of Grass, 1856 352 Preface to “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free,” 1872 363 Preface to the Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass, 1876 368 “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads,” 1888 378 Democratic Vistas 395 From Specimen Days 463 “Slang in America” 557 Suggestions for Further Reading 563 Index of Titles and First Lines 565 Introduction When Leaves of Grass first appeared in July 1855, in a private printing of about 800 copies, everything about the book seemed odd. It was a very thin volume with big pages.