Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Author:Walt Whitman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486113173
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

By the city’s quadrangular houses . . . . in log-huts, or camping with lumbermen,

Along the ruts of the turnpike . . . . along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,

Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips . . . . crossing savannas . . . . trailing in forests,

Prospecting . . . . gold-digging . . . . girdling the trees of a new purchase,

Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand . . . . hauling my boat down the shallow river;

Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead . . . . where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,

Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock . . . . where the otter is feeding on fish,

Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey . . . . where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-tail;

Over the growing sugar . . . . over the cottonplant . . . . over the rice in its low moist field;

Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters;

Over the western persimmon . . . . over the longleaved corn and the delicate blue-flowered flax;

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer there with the rest,

Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;

Scaling mountains . . . . pulling myself cautiously up . . . . holding on by low scragged limbs,

Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush;

Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,

Where the bat flies in the July eve . . . . where the great goldbug drops through the dark;

Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,

Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,

Where the cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides,

Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle the hearth-slab, and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;

Where triphammers crash . . . . where the press is whirling its cylinders;

Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs;

Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft . . . . floating in it myself and looking composedly down;

Where the life-car is drawn on the slipnoose . . . . where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,

Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes them,

Where the steamship trails hindways its long pennant of smoke,

Where the ground-shark’s fin cuts like a black chip out of the water,

Where the half-buried brig is riding on unknown currents,

Where shells grow to her slimy deck, and the dead are corrupting below;

Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments;

Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,

Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;

Upon a door-step .

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