Chapter IX

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men
and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of
Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one
makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste
with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the
air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or anyone's
head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd
schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall!
cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest
aromas,
Thrive, cities--bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from
us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within
us,
We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

A SONG OF JOYS

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

O for the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness
of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.

O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys!
The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool gurgling by
the ears and hair.

O the fireman's joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.

O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in
perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his
opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is
capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.

O the mother's joys!
The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the
patiently yielded life.

O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation,
The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.

O to go back to the place where I was born,
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.

O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,
To continue and be employ'd there all my life,
The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low
water,
The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear.
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young
man;
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on
the ice--I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon, my
brood of tough boys accompanying me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else
so well as they love to be with me.

Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots
where they are sunk with heavy stones (I know the buoys),
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row just
before sunrise toward the buoys,
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert wooden
pegs in the joints of their pincers,
I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the
shore,
There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil'd
till their color becomes scarlet.

Another time mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the
water for miles;
Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
brown-faced crew;
Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced
body,
My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils
of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
companions.

O boat on the rivers,
The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers,
The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and
the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook
supper at evening.

(O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)

O to work in mines, or forging iron,
Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and
shadow'd space,
The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.

O to resume the joys of the soldier!
To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer--to feel his
sympathy!
To behold his calmness--to be warm'd in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle--to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery--to see the glittering of the bayonets
and musket-barrels in the sun!
To see men fall and die and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood--to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.

O the whaleman's joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
I feel the ship's motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning
me,
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, _There--she blows!_
Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest--we descend, wild
with excitement,
I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass, lethargic,
basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
vigorous arm;
O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling, running
to windward, tows me,
Again I see him rise to breathe, we now close again,
I see a lance driven through his side, press'd deep, turn'd in the
wound,
Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and
narrower, swiftly cutting the water--I see him die,
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls
flat and still in the bloody foam.

O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.

O ripen'd joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
How clear is my mind--how all people draw nigh to me!
What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more than the
bloom of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?

O the orator's joys!
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America--to quell America with a great tongue.

O the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity
through materials and loving them, observing characters and
absorbing them,
My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch,
reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which
finally see,
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
embraces, procreates.

O the farmer's joys!
Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, Iowan's, Kansian's,
Missourian's, Oregonese' joys!
To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.

O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.

O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as
one with them.

O the joy of a manly self-hood!
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or
unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the
earth.

Know'st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd games?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse, and drinking?

Yet O my soul supreme!
Know'st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffering
and the struggle?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day or
night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres, Time and Space?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the
sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own, undying one, joys worthy thee, O soul?

O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my
interior soul impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for
reasons,
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd to
powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
further offices, eternal uses of the earth.

O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not--yet behold! the something which obeys none of
the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive--yet how magnetic it draws.

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect
nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the
houses,
To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air),
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

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Footnotes:

[1] Reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Company.

[2] Abridged from the President's address at the Dover meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1899.

[3] Some may already know that there is at least a third thing, argon.

[4] Without phosphorus, no thought.

[5] From _The Idea of a University_.

[6] From Macaulay's essay on Von Ranke's _History of the Popes_.

[7] Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

[8] The third lecture in _Sesame and Lilies_.

[9] That no reference should be made to religious questions.

[10] I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth.

[11] The translator of Marcus Aurelius whom Arnold quotes.

[12] From the _Poetical Works_ of George Meredith; copyright 1897, 1898, by George Meredith; published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

[13] Published by the Macmillan Company, and here reprinted through their courtesy.

[14] From _Society and Solitude_.

[15] From _The Conduct of Life_.

[16] From _The Conduct of Life_.

[17] "Everything which pertains to the human species, considered as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The greater the number of individuals, the more does the influence of the individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a series of general facts dependent on causes by which society exists, and is preserved."--QUETELET.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The following misprints have been corrected:
"testimonal" corrected to "testimonial" (page 63)
"and and" corrected to "and" (page 114)
"immage" corrected to "image" (page 127)
"they they" corrected to "they" (page 130)
"eel" corrected to "feel" (page 133)
"furtune" corrected to "fortune" (page 271)
"interchan e" corrected to "interchange" (page 305)
"Geoge" corrected to "George" (advertisements)

Hyphenation variations have been retained from the original text.